Riley's Farm Journal

Red in Tooth and Claw

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:49:00 EDT

The American pastorate -- the collective body of bible-teachers and counselors responsible for preserving and extending the Christian faith -- have it too easy, or at least they have it far easier than they have any inkling. As an historian, it's frustrating to hear pastors who have no historical framework for judging the collective, cultural benefits of Christianity. For a few decades now, the terms "religion" and "cultural Christianity" have been used in evangelical circles as a pejorative to describe a faith that is based on ritual, or that lacks the vibrant frenzy of a worship service stoked up on guitar, bass, drum and ample, clinking cow-bell. "Religion," in particular, has come to have very negative associations. It is seen a kind of spirit-parched, non-experiential system of rules for living. It's seen as your grandfather's church, full of judgment and rules and reverence and law, with no real bass and guitar. (Don't read the next paragraph if you have a weak stomach.) .. continued in link...

Ollie Stone and the Road to Hell

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:28:00 EDT

The internet reminds me, this morning, that Oliver Stone will be releasing a 10 part Showtime special that purports to put "Hitler in context." Stone reports that he's "been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view." This effort comes about, evidently, in service of Stone's contention that " Hitler is an easy scapegoat." By Stone's way of "thinking," individual human beings are locked into a social and economic matrix that predicts their actions more accurately than something Stone doesn't seem to account for or even mention-- free will.

Well, kids, let's just leave Ollie up on his stool, wearing the dunce cap for now. He thought he was plowing new ground, but he's really just giving voice to a symptom of our collective sloth: we prefer to study intent and context over outcome. "He didn't mean to do that." "I don't think she intended to do harm." "I think their heart was in the right place." "You don't know what sort of childhood he had, and if you did, you wouldn't be so hard on him." I encountered a strange one a few years ago: "you have to admit that's the way she feels about it. You have to let her have her own feelings." (The offender in question could have been a shoplifter, but the larger offense was not acknowledging how she felt about her shoplifting.)

On the daily level of small, endurable sins, we tend, thankfully, to engage in this mercy as a way of getting through life. We assume good intentions across the board. Even someone who believes in original sin, and the depraved nature of the human heart, tends to assume that, on some level, we're all trying to yield to a better, "born again" self. Even when someone does something wrong, we reach very hard to acknowledge how they saw their own actions. We want to know "what, in the world, they were thinking" because we have an investment in believing they had a reason for it.

Dale Carnegie, helping us win friends and influence people, observed that even hardened bank robbers saw their actions in lofty terms. They were merely seeking economic justice, socking it to fat cat bankers, providing food for their kids, etc. One woman told me she thought her divorce was the best thing she had ever done for her kids. (There was no domestic violence or intimidation involved; it was just a matter of not modeling a stale romantic relationship for her children.)

Somewhere in our memory a pastor is preaching, with real conviction, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

The reason for that is clear: the endless consideration of intent alone produces social and economic malaise on an epidemic scale. We don't drive cars that are merely intended to work. We drive cars that actually work. We don't fly planes that had good intentions. We fly planes that take off and land.

Imagine a basketball game, driven by intent, as opposed to accomplishment:

"What a great 3-pointer he intended! Amazing!"
"That was an awesome defense they were hoping for!"
"We're number one -- in our minds!"

Imagine commerce working on that level:

"We honestly wanted to serve the Alaskan Salmon, but we got too busy. That will be $39.95."
"What do you mean? You didn't serve it."
"But I honestly meant to. That will be $39.95."

Before we're tempted to believe the absurd will always remain absurd, we should remember that we're maintaining colossal prison systems because our obsession with intent is much more acute than our ancestors'. When a New York man murdered an Indian, prior to the Revolutionary War, he was tried and executed within a matter of weeks. No one lamented his "intentions." We maintain leviathan social service expense, because we have chosen to make divorce "no fault." We kill millions of children in the womb, because, honestly, their parents didn't "intend" to become pregnant.

Heck, Oliver Stone can't even call Hitler or Stalin evil.

Be careful, Ollie. Take a look at the roadsign--and the pavement. It's getting hotter and hotter.

Bearded Dragons and the like

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:48:00 EDT

For a family with four boys, we arrived at the reptile stage fairly late in the game. I believe I may have grunted approval on the idea of a "bearded dragon" when Mary ran it by me between phone calls and that one act of absent-minded assent led to first one glass aquarium, with a two-light set, (one for day, one for night), along with two hollowed pine logs to shelter the dragons, since there had to be one lizard for Lockton and another for Samuel. Naturally, the red light broke after one day, and it soon became apparent that the two reptiles weren't acting like friendly side-kicks in a Pixar animation. They were acting like reptiles, with one of them looking like he wanted to eat the other. We added an aquarium divider, but that meant too little room for them, so off we went to buy another aquarium and another set of lights and more mealy worms. "We need more crickets too," Mary said. "Crickets?" "They eat crickets. We need to get new crickets every month." The idea of adding a cricket-run to our routine every two weeks suddenly brought things into that really sharp focus you experience when you get a new pair of glasses. "We're not doing that," I said. "We need an online cricket source." "I've tried." "Try harder. We're not running down to San Bernardino to buy crickets. I'm not going to do that. You're not going to do that. Nobody is going to do that." So we did eventually find a place that will ship crickets, but you need to be careful about size, since if the cricket is larger than the space between the dragon's eyes, it will just be an uneasy standoff between dragon and cricket -- and the dragon could could actually die if he manages to eat the jumbo Jiminy, by dint of something called 'back leg paralysis.' The world, I conclude, is a richly complex and detailed place, but in the matter of pets, I strongly urge families to at least consider staying within the same taxonomic class and consider the merits of a friendly, hand-licking mammal whose food doesn't need to be measured, covered in calcium powder, or even kept alive for that matter. A Cocker Spaniel needs no special red light to go sleep, and it could wander just about anywhere in the house, or show up completely by surprise, without setting off a human fire alarm--a sopranic wail of discovery in the far corners of the house. You can't say that about a bearded dragon .

When Man Measures Up to Myth

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:48:00 EDT

Mallory gave me a biography on Jimmy Stewart ("James Stewart: A Biography" by Marc Eliot) for my birthday, over the holidays, and between my Adobe Production Suite obsession and various celebrations, I've been checking in on Jimmy every few days. Eliot doesn't appear to understand the faith life of Presbyterians, (and he assumes no one else will either), but the sheer weight of Stewart's life is impressive: two of his grandfathers served the Union in the Civil War, one of them commissioned a brigadier general by Ulysses Grant; Jimmy's dad ran a thriving hardware store business but left it to volunteer for World War I, at the age of 40; Jimmy's introduction to theater was through music, and his first roles were made possible due to a theatrical convention of the time--they needed an accord ian player; Jimmy attended, and graduated from, Princeton, at a time when there were no coeds on campus; he was attracted to theater, not because he saw acting as a career, but because it might have given him a chance to get close to Margaret Sullivan; at first, he was considered too tall and gangly and slow-talking to be a leading man, but there was something about him that stole the show every time; he could be on stage for a single line and he would be remembered, and singled out by critics, as a bright spot in otherwise failed productions. I have not yet reached World War II in the book, but it's common knowledge that he flew dangerous bombing missions over Berlin, and was decorated for his service, at a time when he could very easily have charted a less troubling course and enjoyed the creature comforts of a matinee idol. His humility about his soldiering was well represented in the George Bailey role he played in "It's a Wonderful Life." He had led a life of surpassing accomplishment, and yet he always played someone who was still trying to figure it all out.

They don't make many like him!

Farm News & Planning

Over the last few years, we've made a concerted effort to make sure the public knows we're open, (billboards, radio, hotel racks, internet, magazines, you name it), and we've pursued that course because there has been a perception you needed to be part of a group to enjoy the farm. While we're still committed to public hours, it's a daunting task, financially and emotionally, to open up the old homestead on, say, a Monday in late December. If you ask me, the farm is worthy of a daily habit, but even our most loyal die-hard customers can't manage that, so.. we're going to try a Wednesday through Saturday public hours schedule during the winter. Keep us in mind for great food, historic retail, and live music on Saturdays. We should be really expensive, but we're a pretty cheap date in these trying times, so put us on your calendar, and by all means, tell us how we can better serve you. (Groups love us--our spring tours are up again this year--but we're still searching for that perfect combination of history-magic and dining value that will make you families at least monthly regulars.)

Time to put on the three cornered thinking cap again...

Really Random Riley

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:21:00 EDT

Photos: William Pote

Mary followed through this week on an idea we've been threatening to try for a long time--offer a take home family-sized homemade chicken pot pie for all the parents who are here with their field trip kids. Actually, we tried it once before, but--knock on forehead, make woody ding-ding sound--we didn't put a sign out featuring a picture of the pie. Mallory drafted one up and the family pies started whipping out the bakery window like frisbees.

We saw someone tooling around in the cool of the afternoon, (Sunday I think) with a big camera rig, and it was our old village blacksmith William Pote IV, taking a chronicle of the fall. That's his picture of the new restrooms above, which I modestly believe are the best looking privies this side of the Connecticut River, and maybe even this side of the Thames. Click here to see the farm through the eyes of our blacksmith.

Speaking of photographs, I have a singular knack for not having the camera in my hand just when some perfectly emblematic moment announces itself. Is anyone else in the same boat? You lock up the XD high-resolution movie camera, safe in its case, and a shaft of light pokes down through the tavern windows, that makes even the afternoon dust look like a cinnamon fog. You run out of camera battery just as an alpha family walks by, made into angels by the evening light, and you think -- "if I just had THAT picture of THAT family" I wouldn't be able to KEEP Southern Californians away from this place. (This might be something you can only understand if you're a living history-apple-farmer entrepreneur). I found this frustration to be true with writing as well; you need to scribble it all down when the tragicomedy takes place. You can live life, or you can chronicle it. Very few people get to do both.

I know we weren't speaking of the French, but this farm journal isn't obliged to have any common theme, so I will just tell you that the movie "Man on Wire" is worth watching -- with a qualification. It tells the story of a French high wire-walker who was obsessed with the idea of running a cable between the World Trade Center towers and walking that span, some 1600 feet above the streets of New York. That 1974 dare-devilry, however, was far more complicated than the act itself--since it had to be planned years in advance, with fake IDs and manufactured identities and the ton-weight transportation of high wire equipment to the top of the building, past security guards. The wire was put in place by virtue of an arrow shot from building to building, and it required teams of participants all willing to be arrested for their prank. The entire trapeze rig was put in place in the early hours of the morning, and the wire-walker himself worried that he was too tired to accomplish his task, after helping to build the rig. Sixteen hundred feet above the ground...

There was also a romantic back story. The Frenchman in question, Phillipe Petit, had a devoted girlfriend who helped him string wire, practice high-wind conditions, and sustain his courage, but after the daredevil cheated death, and earned the attention of the Big Apple's media, a New York woman literally offered herself to him, right on the street, by way of "welcome." He took her up on the offer, before he could even enjoy the celebratory embrace of his helpers, and the jilted lover, interviewed some three decades after the event, seems the very picture of disgusting French romantic existentialism. Paraphrasing: "..he had become a new creature now, a creature of celebrity, and this was a new phase of his life, and his old life was over.."

I've had it with the "ugly American" rap. What self-respecting, milk-fed American woman would put up with this? What daughter of Calvin would put on the Camus face and get all coffee-house in the face of infidelity?

Americans may be loud, but the French are rank cliché.

Molly Farr "Sees" The Future

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:43:00 EDT

I was confirming with Bill Blanchard of Little Big Band fame regarding this Saturday night's Big Band Dance, and he reminded me that I haven't written anything on the farm journal for some time and that he was worried about us.

The truth is that I would love to write a farm journal entry every day, but we've been doing a lot--mostly crunching numbers and trying to plan for an active winter and summer season. We also set out to improve our video production skills by partnering with no less than comedian Victoria Jackson, (Saturday Night Live) and veteran character actor Basil Hoffman (Milagro Bean Field War), who are also ardent Tea Party activists. An encounter between past and present is right up our alley, of course, but most of the time we present documentary fragments of the past--Patrick Henry's speech, the controversy surrounding the Stamp Act, George Washington's rules of civility; in this case, we engaged in conjecture: what would the founders' generation think about a cadre of bankers demanding $700 billion in relief? What would they think about representative bodies voting on legislation so complex our delegates have no time to even read the bills, much less study them? What would they think about modern farming and pitting a two inch minnow against humanity's food supply, as in the case of the Delta Smelt? It's anybody's guess, of course, but it would be difficult to imagine an age of faith, reason, and economy being happy about the modern turn of events in America. I'm an equal opportunity offender, by the way; I believe Democrats and Republicans have been guilty of gross excess over the last century. The industrial economy made them all too greedy for their own approved pork, and now we have a civil service patronage system with voters who are voting to protect their jobs, as much as defend the republic. The dinosaur media treat the Tea Party movement using a template that substitutes contempt for thought, and they ignore the troubling economic realities that underpin the movement: how can we possibly pay for all of this? What happens when the Chinese won't buy our treasuries? What happens when we kill agricultural production to make ourselves feel good and green? What happens to productivity when the federal government taxes the hard working not just to pay for those who can't, but those who won't work? What happens when ACORN offices use taxpayer money to help pimps run for congress?

What would Molly think about that?

The Death of Certainty II -- Who Owns Me?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:39:00 EDT

Just in case anyone was wondering, I've now taken in three of Michael Sander's Harvard lectures on "Justice," and unless I missed something waiting for the HD video feed to buffer, the Almighty hasn't been referenced once in the search for undergraduate truth. (There's a reason why they call them "wise fools.") I kept thinking Michael would lead them to at least refer to Jefferson's formulation, ("endowed by their Creator.."), but no such luck. Perhaps--that's where the course is going?

If we don't "own ourselves," who does? The Libertarian argument against progressive taxation is that it represents a theft of our labor, and thus a declaration of ownership by the taxing authority. The Libertarian conludes that unfair taxation is really slavery in disguise and that it violates our ownership of ourselves, but contemporary progressives know slavery is wrong, so they are forced to conclude we don't own ourselves. We are owned by "society." That should set off a few alarm bells, but the students never really could get beyond the concept of majority rule. Professor Sandel, in fact, brow-beat them if they intimated any problem with democracy. I guess he was trying to get them to challenge the limits of mob rule, but no one really seemed to have the answer: we do not own ourselves. How could we "own" ourselves when we we did nothing to create "ourselves?" How could a watch claim ownership of itself? Doesn't the clock-maker own the watch? Doesn't the weaver own the blanket? If the modern mind can't accept God as our owner, it needs to accept "society" as our owner, and the governing democratic arm of society, in these United States, is Congress.

Have you seen Congress lately?

No thanks.

More Funerals for Certainty

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:58:00 EDT

If you have an hour or so to spare, you might want to watch what the current crop of Harvard undergraduates are debating. In this WGBH/Harvard University production, professor Michel Sandel encourages the students to imagine themselves on a trolley car without brakes, heading for five rail workers, destined to die if the trolley car doesn't stop. Professor Sandel adds this twist: as trolley car drivers, they can choose to divert their car down a spur line and only kill one rail worker by changing course.

What do they do? Kill the five workers or kill the one worker?

The discussion all takes place in Sanders Theater, where the deep burgundy-brown weight of the walls and the ancient, vaulted light combine to make the participants look unequal to the question. (With a few exceptions, Harvard students don't seem to use the King's English, or marshal the great ideas with any precision these days.)

Professor Sandel is leading them all down the road to consideration of the famous case known as The Queen vs. Dudley and Stephens, the generic version of which has been standard fodder for values clarification courses in public high school. It involves the decision of a ship's captain--adrift in a life-boat after the loss of his ship--to kill an ailing orphan cabin boy, so as to feed the remainder of the crew.

Of course, these scenarios tend to involve endless nuance--did the cabin boy give his consent, would it have been more fair to "draw straws," would the trolley car scenario have been more fair if a fat guy had been pushed over a bridge to stop its progress? (This was literally Professor Sandel's invention, tempting us to wonder, was he inviting the students to conclude "fat people" are expendable?)

In only one instance did I see a student stand and say "murder is murder." Professor Sandel seemed to wax a little indignant at this point, if only for the sake of the drama, and he reminded the student that England was very sympathetic to the plight of the captain. The other lifeboat members, after all, had family waiting for them; the orphan had none. Wouldn't the sum total of happiness be increased by favoring the lives of those who had families?

The student didn't flinch. "That's the argument for street crime," he said. "You kill someone on the sidewalk to feed your family."

Unfortunately, this is about as close as any student got to the ten commandments, or any real sense of the axiomatic. One student did say, flat out, "you don't eat human beings," but most students gave what I would have to call technocratic formulations of maximized value, or sneaky narratives about how to avoid the question altogether.

In an 18th century version of the same exchange, a Harvard classroom full of future ministers and lawyers would make--without question--some reference to the Almighty. Someone would surely step forward with the bold pronouncement, "we have no authority to make such a decision" or "better all die than to remain alive without honor."

Perhaps that sense of the unquestioned--that moral stonewall between God's territory and our own--was behind the "murder is murder" comment, but few contemporary college students would dare even intimate they were leaning on eternal truth, much less mention God and man at Harvard, or Yale, or Stanford, or even Cal State San Bernardino. (We did have a young friend who mentioned Jesus at a local community college class, only to be threatened with an eye gouging by devout Muslims in the parking lot afterwards, but that's a different story.)

Some folks think that's all well and good. It's better to argue morality in purely secular terms, but there are some assumptions no one seems to be considering. At the beginning of the course, most of the students just assumed that preserving five lives was a good thing, even at the price of another. But the preservation of human life itself, is, arguably, a gift of our Judeo-Christian ancestors. Some cultures value life so little they throw virgins in Volcanoes and widows on funeral pyres.

What happens when the biblical assumptions are washed away by another generation of academics who think God's axioms are too quaint to acknowledge? What happens when technically educated but morally illiterate biologists run the world?

I guess that's already happening. We're letting Sacramento farmers starve in order to preserve a two inch minnow.

Welcome to the Brave New World. Good work, Harvard.

The Tedious Obligation of Repeating the Truth...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:45:00 EDT

James Riley

The first lady took some grief this week, when she claimed her Olympic-pitching trip to Europe would constitute a "sacrifice." According to one source, the first lady enjoys the services of 30 staff members, five press secretaries, and several private chefs, so if you picture life at the White House, it's not so hard to see a first-class European vacation as something of a sacrifice. (I'm a bit of a home-body myself and I don't even have one press secretary.) Trying to convince the International Olympic Committee that gang-infested Chicago would be a great place for a peace-through-atheletics confab seems like a sacrifice to me as well--but the sacrifice would have more to do with self-respect than material comfort.

It calls to mind a sorry truth about economic policy debates: the people who are entrusted to make the decisions almost never feel their real world consequences. Fidel Castro has lived a life of lavish personal indulgence for nearly five decades, even as his people ration soap and mattresses. Kim Jong-il, North Korea's Marxist emperor-god, lives in what Time Magazine called a "seven story pleasure palace," complete with a wave-pool and motorized boogie boards and every instance of Western materialism you can nail to the walls or spread out over a wet bar.

Of course, extravagance of this sort is not just the province of the Marxist aristocracy. The old world nobility was pretty good at this too. Take a look at any pre-19th century prince, earl or even lowly baronet, and you'll see the rich oil colors of Rubens and Ramsay bathing the young princes in silk and silver.

Any economic system, in other words, can keep a few people in clover. The great irony is that socialism, and its evil sister Communism actually claim to be working on behalf of the masses--and their record is far worse than any monarchy you can imagine. Far from establishing an equal distribution of goods and services, Marxists concentrate wealth among the ruling elite and that ruling class can only remain in power through the kind of brutal suppression that would make a Russian Czar wince. Stalin made Adolph Hitler and the Spanish Inquisitors look like school yard bullies--killing or starving something like fifty million of his own people. Conversely, good old free market capitalism is far better at getting, and establishing a sturdy middle class--and this is really, really, really old news. When, François, Marquis de Barbé-Marbois traveled through American in 1777, he marveled at not being able to find any poor. With a low and easy tax burden, the people were free to feed themselves. It's elementary, Watson.

The tiring truth is that the American people have already learned this lesson, several times. (Sometimes I feel like a teacher with some very slow students.) Back in the sixties and seventies, there was a crypto-romance with socialism and I can remember the day when even the New Yorker admitted, in 1989, that communism was dead. The trophy socialist-states of Sweden and Norway were beginning to grind to a halt and Ronald Reagan had initiated a sustained recovery that turned into a boom, merely by giving the people their money back.

I remember this all clearly because for many years academic, media and union types branded you backward for questioning the great class-free dream of the socialist state. I can remember Ben Stein asking the simple question, towards the end of Jimmy Carter national malaise, why did Hollywood nearly always portray the businessman--the one who employs your kids--as the villain? Why was capitalism always the enemy, when, clearly it provided a better standard of living for more people than any other system yet known to man? The national flirtation with socialism is the macro-equivalent of a despondent man binging on comfort food or drugs. I can remember how sick America once was on this front. I can remember Nixon's wage and price controls. I can remember Jane Fonda sitting her skinny, ugly carcass down on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. I can remember my junior high history teacher, lovingly talking up the Soviet model.

I remember how sick America really was.

So when the New Yorker admitted defeat, it was like a re-birth of the republic. Fresh air. Victory lap. Morning in America again. Every man tending his own vine in the new world. Freedom at last.

..So I hate the current turn of events, the fat, mental laziness of Michael Moore and Garrison Keillor and Rahm Immanuel. It's like explaining something for the ten millionth time to a rebellious child. It's like cleaning the back patio plate glass, only to find it all smudged up again. It's like a flu you've been through and can't shake.

Not this again.

I like history, but I hate repeating it.

Wants, Needs, Desires .. and Where Fall Fits into that Whole Thing

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:39:00 EDT

The Upper Pumpkin Patch September 30, 2009

In college they made me read Sigmund Freud, and, even in college, where no one really thinks, I rebelled. Somewhere in the middle of "Civilization and its Discontents," I looked up from a colloquium I was assigned to lead, and I summarized the text by saying, "in this long, boring passage, Freud tells us everything he knows about the streets of Ancient Rome."

Almost everyone laughed, even the instructor. There was one little New Yorker, a child of Marxists, who scowled at me because I was trashing one of his household icons, but most reasonable people enjoyed hearing their own impressions confirmed. College students, in the last fifty years, are figuratively required to bow down and kiss the feet of Marx, Darwin and Freud--three of the biggest losers who ever graced the planet. I say "loser," not because their influence hasn't been substantial, but because their souls are so parched and their world is so relentlessly physical that you have a hard time imagining any of them with a grandchild on their knee. Their world, and the world they have created, is very cold.

A few days ago, a Facebook friend posted a link to a documentary * about a disciple (and relative) of Freud, Edward Bernays, who pioneered "public relations" in America and the concept of product placement in feature films. He was even credited with transforming the image of Calvin Coolidge by bringing celebrities to the White House. I guess his most dubious achievement was paving the way for female cigarette-smoking by re-branding the weed as a "torch of freedom" and linking it to female sufferage. (There was also the standard Freudian interpretation of cigarettes; it's not exactly a documentary for the little kids.) The grain of truth, by my take, in this world of smoke and mirrors is the notion that people don't always make decisions with their rational, thinking selves. They don't buy shoes based on how long the sole leather lasts but how the shoes make them feel about themselves.A 19th century advertisement, in other words, might talk about the shoes' comfort and reliability and workmanship. A 20th century ad will make you feel like a bold, independent romantic -- just because you purchased the right loafers.

Of course, Freud, made it a little more primal than that, but in one sense, whether you call our savage desires "Id" or "sin," it really isn't very innovative to say that we're a mix of motivations when it comes to what we buy--some lofty and some not so lofty. The fact that advertising is now talking to our underpants instead of our minds and hearts, isn't so much a sign of advertising getting more effective as it is an indication we're not the people our great great grandparents were. They could buy shoes based on craftsmanship; we buy them to join a club, and to show off our membership.

Truly, I spend a lot of time wondering how I can woo people up here. A business doesn't do anything, good or bad, until someone agrees to buy its product, so I don't apologize for my marketing obsession, but I think our place puts the lie to Freud and Bernays and the whole slew of Mad Men who think we can't sell anything unless a pretty girl is showing off her nylons. (God created pretty girls, and I have no objection to using them in an ad, but there's a difference between selling an indiscretion and selling a marriage.)

When I look at the pumpkin field up there, I see a marriage. I'm not sure how much time I would spend in a purely clinical explanation of the pumpkins' fiber content or their vitamin/mineral mix, or even how easy they are to carve. I do get it. We're selling sizzle along with the steak. I understand that people don't buy pumpkins on the basis of their chemical inventory, but I think it's a tad demeaning to turn people into pools of Freudian Id and sell to their death wish or their night terrors.

The reality is far different. Before the three stooges took over (Marx, Freud, and Darwin), scholars looked to the ancient texts for truth, and those texts told us,

"What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honor and put everything under his feet." -- Hebrews 2:6-8

I suppose someone could reasonably ask, "when you sell corn on the cob from the barbecue, are you really selling something as abstract as 'honor?'' Or 'how is a purchasing a grilled cheese sandwich at the tavern connected to something as lofty as 'courage?'" How does walking around the pumpkin patch make you a little lower than the angels?

Well..try it some time, and I think you'll see it's not so outrageous at all. It certainly beats the way Freud would sell a day in the pumpkin patch.

Cider Time

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:13:00 EDT

Cider Time

About four weeks ago, I had Eric Drazin press seven gallons of Gala apple cider and we capped it off with a vapor-lock in a glass decanter that looks very much like a large light-bulb. We placed the decanter in the new cider cellar, which stays very even on the temperature, provided the door gets shut at night. (I'm guessing our cider cellar is a little higher than most at about 64 degrees or so, since it's south-facing.) At about five days into the brew, I added about 7.5 cups of brown sugar, dissolved in warm water, and I took a brix reading the next day at about 18, which means the final alcohol content should be about 11 percent or so. About a day later, a little white wine yeast arrived in the mail and I added that, and I stopped by the concoction every few days to check the action--which was pretty steady, about 50 taps of the vapor lock every minute and a change in the color from deep syrupy brown to a kind of amber, frothy blonde.

You can make a real art out of cider making--as you can with wine of course, but the basic ingredients are sugar, yeast, even temperature, and a method for keeping it all under-exposed to oxygen. If you do a lot of racking (siphoning off the top of the cider into another container), you can clear up the fluid and make it look pretty, and if you are sure the sugar content has completely been converted to alcohol, you can add a half teaspoon of sugar to a 22 ounce bottle and make it something like champagne after a week or two. (Careful, you can explode the bottle if there's too much sugar and yeast in a closed container.)

The art and the science gets much more complex, of course, and a person with a really sharp palate would seek a mix of aromatic, sweet and astringent apples and you might even be able to find someone out there who could taste the oak barrel of traditional methods, or the apple varieties themselves, the way a wine connoisseur can name the grapes and even the vineyard.

Me -- I just like having something around that was a product of the rain drops and the sunshine and the sweat that fell on this patch of God's creation. If a few friends are around to enjoy it with me, that's a bonus too.

Now if you really want to get into the good stuff, you need to talk to a Guy who can turn water into fine wine--PRESTO.

Mountaintop Dreaming

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:11:00 EDT

September 23, 2009 9:45 AM

Mountaintop Dreaming...

A Dramatic view of the farm from the west. (Click picture for a much larger panorama)

Ever since the fire, the blaze-scrubbed ridge to our west has been tempting my eight year old son, Gabriel, into a mountain climb. He's been asking me to hike it for some time, and I asked the new Wildlands preserve manager, Evan Welsh, if we could take a look at our farm from the top. He graciously gave permission, but I kept putting off Gabriel. The fall has a way of consuming every micro-degree of our focus around here, and Gabriel had a kind of quiet persistence that was all the more irritating because it was polite and undemanding.

"Dad, can we hike that mountain tomorrow?"
"We're going to the beach tomorrow, remember?"
"Heah, Dad can we climb that mountain now?"
"It's noon, Gabriel; we want to do in the evening or the morning when it's cool."
"Okay."
"Dad, can we hike that mountain tomorrow morning early?"

He had finally pinned me--after about a dozen tries.

I said yes, but by the next morning, I was full-throttle into number-crunching, and Excel, and memos and I said "Gabriel. Could we try it tomorrow? I'm rushing to get this stuff done."

He just hung his head and turned away and walked down the stairs in a way that was so accepting and sadly reconciled to disappointment that it was almost like a bolt came down from heaven with God's name on it and the inscription: go hike that hill with your son!

I stood up, scrambled for something to hike in other than colonial buckled shoes, and yelled out across the house.

"Gabriel! We're going up the hill."

Mary said, out of her sleep, "see if the other boys want to go."
At first, they didn't, and that was a little sad, as though some measure of their childhood had slipped away unmarked, but then as we got to the door, Lockton was suiting up for the climb, and as we got to the roadside, Samuel appeared running out of the house. Jon Harmon, reporting in for work and watching us begin the climb, decided he was up for it too.

When we crossed the road, the first thing we saw in the stream-bed was an institutional-sized mound of bear dung (pear and wild-blackberry by my reckoning), and I found myself wishing the Constitution was still in effect, that you could carry a sidearm without having to prove membership in the state-approved Samurai guild, but then I saw our dog, ("Bear") approaching and I counted our numbers again--two adults, three children--and I thought, "heck, this isn't Montana; we're not up against Kodiaks around here. These are scrawny little New Age California bears."

Up the hill we went, using the blackened branches of dead Manzanita to steady ourselves as we rose--at a pretty fast clip up off the valley floor. When we reached the ridge, it was actually a fairly leisurely stroll across the moonscape of ash and charcoal-brush. In pre-fire conditions, a hike along these hills can be pretty punishing, and I kept thinking it's weird to see any utility in a fire, but the views, and the clarity of the hillside contour made it all seem like the work of some super-crew of landscapers--getting ready for a new planting. If it were my land (and I had the capital), I'd be tempted to terrace it off and put in new apple trees.

Samuel and Lockton and Jon Harmon took the initial hill without breathing very hard, but I was a bit of a wheezing wreck, with soot and sweat on my brow, insisting on good hiking etiquette. "C'mon guys; let's stick together. What if one of these pear-and-blackberry fueled adolescent bears caught up with us?"

The fresh dirt was a tracker's dream with all the bear and racoon and coyote prints showing clearly in the clean earth. In some places the ash was deep enough to swallow up both your ankles, and the views, well...

.

There is something about being up on a hilltop to make you feel both insignificant and grand at the same time. It can render you both disconnected and somehow above it all as well, as though the big picture in front of you is somehow managable: you just mark up the landscape with a highlighter and scribble your instructions for the crew.

Seeing the beauty of what God has allowed our family and our staff to build up here, over the years, was necessary for me. I needed that moment of simplicity to get me back into the game. Thanks, Gabriel.

Riley's Farm Journal June 30 July 15, 2009

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:15:00 EDT

Riley's Farm Feed Summary
June 30 - July 15, 2009

Inspired, Unfortunately, by a True Story

                   Restoring Their Rightful Place
                    A "Front Man" Documentary 



                 By James Riley, All Rights Reserved






                               "JEREMY"

               EXT. BEACH - EVENING

               A sullen, brooding teenager, JEREMY
               Grossman, throws pebbles into the surf
               and then turns off in the direction of a
               seaside estate...read more.

A Riley's Farm July 4th..

(Video & Pictures here)

Independence

Every day, around here, is something like July 4th, so, over the years we haven't emphasized the holiday, since we always felt we were competing against more flashy versions of the (read more..)

Free at Last

Free at Last: Nothing spectacular, just a commentary on the trials of printing envelopes on a HP laser printer:

"...I put landscape. It printed portrait.."
"...great. Now it wants me to order a yellow cartridge.."
"...no, it still says processing MS word...whatever..."
"...how do I tell it I ordered the cartridge anyway?..."
"...Dang. Portrait again. Yup. Same thing. Off the page..."
"...how many of these linen envelopes do we have?..."
"...it's hovering between order yellow and processing MS Word document..."
"...I've seen that menu. I've been here already..."
"...wait..is this the one I just printed or was that the one from the previous job before I replaced the yellow cartridge?..It printed too fast. You know?..."

Have you ever noticed, that with today's technology, there are certain jobs you...read more.

In the Good Old Summer Time...
Foggy notions about cost-per-click and Audience Value

I'm debating our decision about evening hours. I think we're the place to have a great dinner in the country--to be certain--but I don't have a spare $100,000 to convince enough people to ...read more.

Living History Javascript

It's a bit late for the farm journal, but I was feeling restless and a bit propeller-head from chasing down coyotes and playing with Javascript so as to add a Big Band web countdown and rotating jpg web-ads to the farm journal (above.) Javascript is not that tough--just a little tedious. For those of you who don't know web design, it's..read more.

Half Blog, Half Plea
It's 1946 in Old Oak Glen.

I want you to do something for your own good. A few nights ago, my wife and kids dragged me down to the Redlands Bowl for a Tommy Dorsey tribute. I didn't want to take a break--but I did. The night rushed in through the palm trees, along with the melodies, and before long,...read more.

Riley's Farm Journal June 20-29, 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:08:00 EDT

Riley's Farm Feed Summary June 20-29, 2009

The Timeless Standard
Why It's Difficult to Redeem the Standard in Media June 20, 2009

Your correspondent is not a big fan of the beach, (I'm more of a beatnik, lounge-loving Calvinist) but his kids dragged him down to Newport/Balboa last night for hot dogs and s'mores. The company and the conversation was good, and it was a cold night, so it didn't quite seem as much like the running of the bikini salmon as usual. I marveled to see Ruby's still out there at the end of the Balboa pier. Concept Eateries always seem to change every few years in trendy, high-rent spots and there was the same Ruby's I remember on college trips down to Balboa--clean, polished, stainless steel with homage to swing era Coca Cola advertising. Some of our extended circle of home-schoolers even did a little impromptu swing dancing next to the machine-age appointments, and I took it as proof of my contention that if you adapt some sort of classic standard, family pictures will save you from being memorialized in baggy, prison-inspired beach gear.

My friend, Mike Lewis and I discussed the goal of starting a kind of film academy and center..read more.

Making a Day of it on the Farm (Video)
June 22, 2009

A Restaurant Commercial (Video)
Based on a John Adams Story June 24, 2009

They Just Aren't Man Enough to Say It...
The Anti-Human Agenda of Cap & Trade June 25, 2009

I've written about this before, but the zero population, anti-human, "global village" band of policy freaks know they will never be able to sell what Earth Day baby-hater Paul Ehrlich once tried to pitch when he wrote:

"(We need) compulsory birth regulation... (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size."

Only a tenured half-wit, or an S.S. field marshal could write that sort of thing. In practice, the way to keep people from read more

Patriots and Parishioners
June 29, 2009

We had a full public house on Saturday with the Pasadena Patriots and our larger than normal read more.

Riley's Farm Journal June 14-19, 2009

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:42:00 EDT

Stupid I-Phone Tricks - June 14, 2009

We attended a home school high school graduation last night, and two different celebration parties afterwards. Mary volunteered to pick up a cake for one of the graduation moms and the Iphone GPS pointed us to a non-existent Sam's Club on Perris Blvd, a full 8 miles from its actual location. Borrowing the language of "Galaxy Quest," I kept doggedly advising Mary to allow the "little blue thingy" (indicating our position) to overtake "the little red thingy" (the non-existent Sam's Club). We bowed to this new technology right until...read more.

Pinning Hope on Beasts - June 15, 2009

It might work at birthday parties, but in real life, you would never pin a tail on a donkey, and you certainly wouldn't do it blindfolded. I've watched enough election cycles to know that is exactly what we do as voters. We pin our hopes on a candidate, or, even worse, a party, and we usually get kicked in the teeth. It doesn't matter if..read more...

Shaping Fate - June 16, 2009

One way of remembering the weddings of your life is to chronicle the roles you've played at them: guest, ring-bearer, usher, videographer, present-boy. All of those parts, even that of a guest, has a kind of peril attached to it. People want weddings to go just right, and what if you are the guy whose cell phone blares "La Bamba" right at the "husband and wife" moment? What if you stretch your legs at the wrong.. read more.

Heah, kids, gather 'round the set!
It's time for another episode of..

Customer Service in the
Post Christian World - June 17, 2009

I'm not in the habit of giving consumer financial tips, because I don't know what I'm talking about, but I will extend this advice with respect to dining out and credit cards: if the waiter makes a fishy mistake, have him void the ticket and give you a receipt for the void, then sign the corrected ticket. The other night, at a high concept restaurant called The Inquisition (not really), the waiter handed me a sub-total..read more.

Flat Out Gorgeous This Morning ..AND..
Four Riley's Farm Web Scripts - June 19, 2009

The farm is beyond beautiful this morning--a whole leafy-green salad field of strawberries out there, climbing red roses everywhere, grapes fattening up. You just have to see it... read more.

Summer, Town Crier, Weddings

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 14:16:00 EDT

Jesse Blesch has started in on the painting of a signboard in the tavern that we're wildly excited about. When you walk into the public house, this week, you can see it being hand-lettered and I imagine over the next few weeks, you'll start to see the Hawk itself appearing feather by feather, hue by hue. Nothing beats that hand-painted-right-over-the-planks look. I just stand there and watch it sometimes.

Summer Day Camp is getting some pretty heavy bookings, but we keep getting requests for a week long overnight camp from the Orange County and San Diego parents--so, farm staff, if you're reading this, let's get together and plot it out. (As in today.)

The Strawberries are a' popping--big time. I think we had a lot of people anxious for cherries last weekend, but it was kind of nice to see the patch getting picked by LOTS of families last Saturday, and even a few here and there on a Monday. U-Pick Strawberries are a bargain family outing, and the new high fashion is thriftiness--so get hip. Pick a few strawberries.

All the really cool kids and moms take their dad to the Night Before Father's Day at the Old Packing Shed. There's still time to be one of them. Games, Music, Tributes to Pop! We have towering crates of glass-bottled Dad's Root beer stacked up and ready for you to swill too.

August is not my favorite month around here, (largely because it doesn't seem to be your favorite month around here), so I've decided to give you a little break from what our fearless leader is calling a "Deep Recession." Free music. Michael Wassbottten of the Mill Creek Boys and Freeman House are putting together double-header Americana music on Saturday nights from 5 to 9 PM. Two great bands will be featured at each show. You can pick raspberries and strawberries, enjoy our farm grill barbecue, shop for gifts in the general store, and hear some great music. There's nothing quite like live music on a Summer Saturday night, and the music is free. The barbecue isn't free, because I am not the federal government and I don't have that fancy paper they use to print money, but we will give great value for very off-Broadway prices. Keep checking back.

Mallory and Eric's wedding was something like an hour or two in a pleasant sidewalk cafe located right smack dab in the middle of heaven. I can't do it justice. I really didn't get to enjoy my own wedding, because an arctic storm was blasting through the packing shed, but I had so much fun talking to and dancing with our guests and basking in the joy of it all, that, I confess, I wish there were a wedding everyday around here. (Heah....) Normally, I prefer conversation, but I danced and made toasts and threw rice and got completely OUT of my normally introspective, cranky self. Mallory and Eric did it the right way--and it was cause for a celebration! Praise God.

Summer

I haven't been writing quite as much, because we've been doing some last minute summer planning, and I'm always traumatized by bulk emails, which I had to compose and send out yesterday. I realize that as you all proceed through your day, with your various challenges and personal trials, that a Riley's Farm update may or may not be helpful in making you feel better about life.

Suppose, for example, you're a warehouse foreman and a 40 foot semi-trailer has just damaged your loading door--and you have 30 minutes to find someone responsible to wait for the repair crew, or sit alone in the warehouse all night, guarding expensive imported European cheese and sausage baskets. Someone is reading your email in your office and they yell:

"Heah, Chuck, the strawberries are ready for u-pick at Riley's Farm."

"That's great," you respond, agitated, "but I have a 10 foot hole in the warehouse wall, Duane--and WHAT ARE YOU DOING READING MY EMAIL?"

"I signed you up for the updates, man. The Riley's Farm updates....so you'll know when the strawberries are ready..and when the Father's Day hoe-down thingy is."

"Duane? Have you got that repair crew?"

"I don't know what your talkin' about. Crandall says you're the repair crew. Heah, Riley's Farm has a summer camp."

I suppose our updates could you hit you at a good time, but I'm always afraid our emails will arrive sometime between two big emails you have to send your accountant, pronto, with two really big fat PDF files you can't get to attach, and your wife will be looking over your shoulder, and she'll see the little "Riley's Farm: Father's Day, Strawberries, Summer Camp" and she'll say, "ohh..read that one," and you'll say, "Heather. We've got 10 minutes to get this down to Peter or we're going to have trouble with the franchise tax board. We can do the Riley's Farm huckleberry thing later."

The point I'm trying to make is that you should make some time to celebrate. It will help you forget about the hole in the warehouse wall--and it will address another nagging reality brought home to your correspondent by these pictures of his son, over the years.

Life goes by too quickly.

On Behalf of Goats

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 09:34:00 EDT

Could I have a word with you?

There's something to be said for a small goat company, not publicly traded. If you have more than a few acres, you won't even have to buy your original investment. Someone's kids will grow out of their 4H years, and they will give them away. If you get a male and female, your stock will split over and over again, and you will have several hundred shares, after just a few years. At first, when someone says, "heah, there's a baby goat out there," you think, "heah, cool," and then baby goats are being born more or less every day, almost like mail delivery.

There really is no management class to worry about in a company of goats. In fact the word "class" and goats just don't go together at all. They can be cute sometimes, sort of wise looking, but very--how shall we say?--honest about their needs, candid, frank. Sometimes brutally frank. They are not exactly storybook in their manners.

"Look at that cute little goat eating the hay."

"Look at that cute little goat being bottle fed."

"Oooh, gross. What is that goat Doooo-ing??"

And another goat comes into the world.

Other than creating new baby goats, goats generally just like to eat and run around, and they will mow your lawn for you, or eat down just about anything you want eaten down, and some things you don't want eaten down. They generally look pleased to see you, because they believe you will throw some piece of vegetation, or some section of an old grill cheese sandwich into their pen. And they are generally right about this. They expect you to feed them and they have a way of getting food out of you, and even your guests, even though they have no spoken or written language. If you put a "please don't feed the goats" sign near them, you could almost see the words "yeah, right" being scribbled over the text, before the Sharpie ink dried. No human child has yet been born who does not feel an immediate, visceral need to feed goats upon seeing them for the first time. At 49 years old, I still feel the urge to throw some sort of food into their pen.

The government, by and large, doesn't care about goats, and no one has told the Treasury that goats can move--so there is no goat tax yet. The S.E.C. does not regulate goats, nor does the Department of Transportation, though some goats could drag a grown man to work every day, if there was an old grill-cheesed sandwich in it for them.

Once in a great while, you get a mean, nasty goat--and then you have a free gift for that bus driver who keeps asking whether you sell goats or not. Theoretically, the goats could come in handy if there were some major disaster and you needed a source of fresh protein, though I believe I would wait for the FEMA relief before I tried a goat taco. Still, the ranging, growing flock, from a survivalist standpoint, is comforting.

Sooner or later, of course, the herd will get too large, and then you can call up one of those parents whose child has just joined the local 4H club. I think you can sell a little goat for $40 or $50.

But you won't ever really be parting with it, because later, after the 4H years are over, you'll get it back...

...and some bus driver will be very happy.

Showers, Constitutions

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:31:00 EDT

Early Summer Mist

We had a delightful shower this last Saturday with that old Oak Glen summer weather pattern--two or three days of clouds rising like castles over the Forest Falls ridge and then boom--cool winds and rain. This one was just a pleasant late spring wash and I saw guests standing out in it, sort of celebrating. Storms have a kind of signature that lets you know whether they're dangerous or not, and if I could order weather, I would order at least a dozen of these a year. No hail. Light rain. Cool wind. Proof of the Almighty #4324-lr.(3c).

The farm, courtesy of many dedicated hands, is looking more and more story-book these days. There was so much manicured cultivation in every direction, when I walked the place yesterday, that I got to thinking I should remind you all that when you come up, you can spend at least an hour or two exploring the place, along the red-dash marked trail on the farm map. (Follow the map carefully; we do have neighbors.) There are some cross-valley vistas that can't be done justice by any photo, so you should come up and have a meal, then take a walk. Can a corporate restaurant offer you acres of acres of farm land, by way of after-meal constitutional? I think not, sir. (Don't quote that last sentence out of context by the way.)

Taking a Constitutional

Two Quotes this morning, the first from Federalist #78:

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

The second, hauntingly, comes from a period more than 30 years later:

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression ... that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; ... working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."

--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

The first quote is Hamilton's and the second is Jefferson's. They weren't the best of friends, of course, but the erie prescience of Jefferson is difficult to ignore, even if he had the benefit of watching the "federal judiciary" in operation for some years, by the time he made this damning observation.

The fight over Proposition 8 this week, and in the oncoming months, highlights a sorry reality about our judges' soft-spoken but voracious appetite for power.

Hamilton wrote, truthfully, that the role of the courts is to determine if a statute violates the Constitution. "No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid."

Certainly, in instances where our Constitution is very clear, as in the case of the 2nd Amendment, we would expect the court to strike down all kinds of restrictive gun laws, which go far beyond the regulation of the militia and extend to an outright banning of the clear right of the people to "bear" arms.

However, when the life-time appointed jurists began looking to the Constitution's "penumbral emanations" to strike down laws they don't agree with, or use court orders and injunctions to make law they would prefer, they make themselves into whores without the face paint. Read the Constitution of the United States. Do you find any explicit or even implied right to kill another human being in the womb or define marriage however you like? It doesn't exist. It's not there. If you want it there, amend the document, but don't pretend a judge should be making policy. Supreme court nominee Sonia Sotomayer advocated just that in a candid, but caught-on-tape moment. In so doing, she broke a trade secret of the guild. ("Shut up, Sonia. We know we make policy; we're just not supposed to tell the public!")

Judges have an obligation, a sacred obligation, to make their arguments without resorting to a chain of implicit and tenuous assumptions about the intent of the original language. When you hear someone talking about the United States Constitution as a "living, breathing document, capable of change," ask them if their marriage licence is "living and breathing." Ask them if their wedding vows can be changed to reflect new partners, as the urge comes along. Ask them if their bank can change their mortgage agreement whenever they feel like it. Ask them if the treasury can just decide whether to make good on its "living, breathing" bond obligations.

Say what you mean, judge, but don't lie to yourself. A judge who makes himself into a legislator is really no better than the worst sort of con artist or rapist or murderer on the street. Each of these thugs has active contempt for the law, but you could argue that the "policy making" judge is far worse than the murderer, because when we feel that even judges can't be trusted to obey the law, why should society? Murderers only kill people. Bad judges can kill the very law that protects us from muderers.

Believe it or not, the founders, in their wisdom, knew that even those appointed to sit on the bench would be capable of this sort of depravity, and they fully expected both the legislature and the executive to check that depravity. In practice, however, they don't. A truly constitutional president would have ordered federal law enforcement to "stand down" on any Roe v. Wade related prosecution or arrest, and he would have allowed the states to make and enforce their own criminal law on the matter. He would have encouraged a show down with the judiciary, when it becomes infected with policy-makers, as opposed to jurists.

Hamilton argued that the judge had no "sword," but in fact he does. If you ask most policeman where their authority comes from, they will hold up a court order. American law enforcement has become nearly unquestioning in its sense of obligation to the courts. Just once, I would like to see an order from the governor (or the president) come into conflict with an order from a judge. Even better, I'd like to see a city council get a little Patrick Henry spirit, and order their police departments not to enforce a federal judicial order they thought was an egregious infringement of their local right to representation.

Let the checks and balances begin.

Riding Weather, A Brutal Modern Secret Truth

Wed, 27 May 2009 12:29:00 EDT

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, Part I

Tue, 26 May 2009 09:49:00 EDT

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.

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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?

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Strawberry News

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:41:00 EDT

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.

The High-Minded Fence Straddle

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:41:00 EDT

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.

Wedding or Gang Initiation?

Mon, 18 May 2009 14:05:00 EDT

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

Sat, 16 May 2009 13:58:00 EDT

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

Wed, 13 May 2009 12:09:00 EDT

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

Tue, 12 May 2009 12:12:00 EDT

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...

Thu, 07 May 2009 13:20:00 EDT

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...

Mon, 04 May 2009 15:00:00 EDT

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

Fri, 01 May 2009 11:10:00 EDT

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.."

Beauty Contests, Fine Manicured Lawns, Panic

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:34:00 EDT

They say that the tradition of the finely manicured English lawn goes back to at least the 15th century, and there are manorial paintings to prove it, complete with images of workers taking the scythe to the Baron's emerald meadow. I'm all for making the watering of sod efficient, but there is a kind of soul-poverty associated with folks who don't want anyone to landscape with that prettiest of all groundcovers, that proof of heaven, that deep green bluegrass carpet beneath your bare summer feet. If someone wants to decorate the backyard with colored gravel, reclaimed asphalt, venus fly traps, and cacti capable of enduring the fifty year draught, fine, but I worship the God who has cattle on a thousand hills--and those cows need grass. There are too many kids around here, praise be, to really have a manicured lawn, but I still say nothing beats that oasis perfection of stumbling upon a Palm Desert golf course, with ponds, grass, and big shade trees.

I think there is something else behind the politically correct objection to grass, and that's an objection to beauty itself. Most of us just aren't beautiful. We want our landscaping to reflect the dreary egalitarian grime of a turd-green tumbleweed garden. ("Just who do they think they are? Putting in a new lawn?") Bobble-headed, bobble-wristed Perez Hilton couldn't allow Miss California, Carrie Prejean, to just be beautiful. He had to hurl insults and obscenities at her because she didn't agree with his take on marriage; but I don't think it was just the politics of the exchange. The reality is that there are many Americans who don't want to put anything at all to a contest, much less beauty. If they have to participate in judging people prettier than they are, they durn well better have the right opinions. Hilton may have been carrying his rainbow banner to the event, but what he really laments is his own ugliness of soul. He wants everyone--including beautiful, truth-telling Miss California--to be as miserable and as detestable and as shallow as he is.

That's really the secret behind any group of friends who don't want one of their number to succeed. It's all one fabric--beautiful lawns, accomplished women, excellent scholarship, financial success. The village will eventually stone or maim anyone too handsome, too wise, or too successful.

Another way of putting it is that we worship safety and the risk-avoidance inherent in just living life. If you plant a lawn, you might lose it. If you enter a contest, you might be runner up. If you go out of doors, and work for a living, you might discover your latent food allergy. There's a part of us deeply angry at anyone courageous enough to live their lives. I saw this poster the other day on an internet forum, and I don't know where to give credit, but it tickled me.

When Joe Biden comments on anything, you know it probably wasn't worth discussing, and that goes for this incredibly overblown swine flu. As Ron Paul reminded us two days ago, in 1976 one person died of the swine flu and 25 died of the cure for it. It's not that you shouldn't study a hazard, but panic is the wrong response--always. We might be safer--and have no immunities whatsoever--if we all wrapped ourselves in poly bags and never left our living rooms, but commerce, agriculture, and the arts would all grind to a halt. Lord save us from these soulless functionaries who don't believe in heaven. All they have is this life and they worship it, literally, to death.

Blast from the Past

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:56:00 EDT

There was a legend in my hometown, Arcadia, that the former mayor owned a bomb shelter that was big enough to host an underground high school party or two. The "legend" part of this story might be the size of the underground complex, since a school tour parent and daughter of the mayor in question confirmed its existence for me, and even the high probability of her older brother outfitting a shindig or two down there, but I wager it was more like the bomb shelter at my in-laws old place, which was really just big enough to organize a poker game in reinforced concrete, with ominous red stripes on the wall--indicating the compass positions of March and Norton Air Force base.

I re-watched "Blast from the Past" last night with the kids, and although the language of the plot's post-Cold War chapter is pretty vulgar, there's a powerful argument being made about our culture in this story of a Cal Tech eccentric who builds a vast underground fall-out shelter and mistakes a crashed jet for the first salvos of a nuclear war. The nutty professor takes his pregnant wife down into the compound and locks the doors for a generation. The little family's isolation from the San Fernando Valley for thirty five years reveals a values shift that doesn't seem to be celebrated by the film-makers, which--by itself--puts the flick in my top twenty list.

With the exception of the civil rights movement, the Sixties brought with it not much more than pure social poison--cheap relationships, divorce, drug abuse, and the resulting cynicism that made the "underground child" Adam Webber (Brendan Fraser) seem like a gallant, if innocent, Galahad when he emerges looking for a wife among the ladies of the late 1990s. It's comic stuff, to be certain, but even the characters themselves--when confronted with this picture of civility emerged from the amber--seem to recognize that the world has lost something in its rush to embrace nihilism. When the valley shopkeepers of the 1990s repeatedly curse, Adam Webber says, "would you mind not taking the Lord's name in vain?"

"You have a problem with that, buddy?"

"I certainly do have a problem with that," he says.

"Blast from the Past" is the flip side of "Jurassic Park." In the big lizard flick, saintly old Richard Attenborough tells us to "step aside" and let the re-born, remorseless, scaled monsters enjoy their killing ways. Humans, it is implied, should stand aside and allow even the most evil whims of nature to take their toll, out of deference to a value-neutral biological universe. "Blast from the Past" stands in awe of a human being redeemed from the savagery of nature. Adam Webber would slay the dragon. Lord Attenborough would offer up his children to it.

More evidence of our free-fall...

Seniors &The Sorry Reality of Conflict

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:45:00 EDT

If you or someone you know is attached to the management of a senior home, assisted care facility, senior community, or senior anything, let them know about our great summer savings for Seniors at Riley's Farm. We've found that seniors don't like traversing the entire width and breadth of the farm, but they do enjoy a good meal and good, toe-tapping music, amidst the pastoral beauty of their rural youth. Just a few minutes ago, I stretched my right arm out a little too fast and I had a senior moment. I also found that some restaurants begin their senior discount program at age 55. (Six years away for your correspondent, now experiencing a scapular, scraping stream of senior pain.)

The Sorry Reality of Conflict

Those of you acquainted with my cranky style and my thoroughgoing embrace of the Calvinist take on man's utterly depraved nature may be surprised to know that I do have my weepy, group-hug moments. There's a ritual I go through after the Revolutionary War Adventure. I try to shake the hands of all the parents and teachers who visit the tour, and I know--of course--that we can't agree on everything, but there are moments of commonality among people that seem to presage the peace of heaven. Sometimes, you can feel it a ballpark, when people of every stripe stand for the national anthem. Sometimes you see even atheists and believers awe-struck by the way Judy Collins sang Amazing Grace. Sometimes friends or co-workers, on parting, after years of working together, forget all their squabbles. For a moment, all they feel is the glow of their common lives, their common share of a journey spent together in life. At the risk of descending into deep absurdity, I remember a news story about Cher weeping at the funeral of Sonny Bono. She had spent most of her post-marriage years ridiculing and mocking her ex-husband, but in the end, all the cheap shots got washed away by the sobbing. Now, to be clear: I can't stand Cher. She's the very picture of what happens when a shallow intellect is fused to a celebrity sense of self. She's a pitiful monument to worshiping whorish youth at all costs, but even in that weeping moment, even I can imagine putting a hand on her shoulder and saying, "there, there."

I'm quite certain God knew that we need these moments of respite from the troubles. You need to turn the speakers up and weep at the Celtic harmonies now and then; you need to picture in your mind's eye an old daddy singing "Danny Boy" to his parted son. You need to clap your hands, sway back and forth in the all gospel choir, and feel the spirit.

But when the music is over, you don't want Cher making public policy. You may be able to sing a hymn, on the gallows, with a remorse-ridden murderer, but you still need to trip the hatch. Simply put, you need the emotion to serve the intellect, and not the other way around. The tragedy of our age is that we have it upside down. Our political leaders are 90% pop-jamboree and 10% ideas--and most of those ideas bankrupt at that. My Marine friend, Steve Klein, reminded me of a time when Hollywood could make a movie where the actors actually sang "Onward Christian Soldiers" without a trace of irony, without the impulse to mock belief in a God whose surpassing love and strength existed to defeat evil. In the scene above, a congregation sings that very song in the middle of a cathedral whose roof has been shorn away by a Nazi air raid. As the chorus swells, the camera looks up to take in the sight of B-17s on their way to defeat the enemy.

The facts are simple, but they are routinely forgotten: both good and evil remain in the world. Those moments of commonality, the thunder of the chorus, shouldn't be there to make us forget our sins, but to proceed on a war footing against them. After you have come to Jesus, after the tears have dried, remember what He said: "I come not to bring peace, but a sword."

More Wine, Less Whine

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 11:43:00 EDT

Mary and I toured Temecula wine country for our anniversary this weekend, and our guide kept talking about the number of new wineries that were being planned, and planted, even in this economy. I should have written down the precise numbers, but I believe she said there were 23 wineries now going through the site permit process, with a goal of establishing a total of 100 new wineries in the next ten years. One of the small farms was even the result of a luxury home distress sale; the new family took the five acre estate and planted grapes all along the hillsides. When we were there, a live band was playing out on the courtyard and the tasting room was awash in guests. Other wineries featured restaurants, spas, gift shops, and a whole calendar full of live music events.

I asked our tour guide, "do you ever have any squabbles between vineyard owners as to who gets more busses, more tourists?"

"No," she said. "We work together."

Simple stuff, really. I think it's known as "a rising tide lifts all boats." Here's to hoping this seaside wisdom catches on--here and generally.

I was telling Mary "you know, in business, it's really not that difficult to offer reasonably good service. If you return your emails, smile at the customers, and make a reasonable effort to provide for their needs, you will be doing better than 99% of the competition."

The simple fact is that most teenagers are not taught to be polite. They are certainly not taught to smile or say hello. Hospitality is not part of our nature, generally. Cool, aloof shyness is more likely to be the norm, and you have to train that reserve out of new employees if you mean to make customers happy. In Temecula,when we approached the tasting rooms--even if they were crowded--the stewards always smiled and were anxious to give you the whole history of their vineyard. One young fellow was the son of a Basque shepherd and he gave us a source for Suffolk sheep. Another walked us through the de-steming and fermentation room and the barrel room--giving us the chemistry of wine making in about fifteen friendly minutes. The girl at Calloway took our picture and asked us all about apple country. I didn't hear one Temecula vineyard owner ragging on their competition, or making sweeping pronouncements about what was, and was not, "Temecula." No one claimed any special expertise for being there longer. No one growled, under their breath, "THEY bring in grapes from outside of the valley."

Granted, they turn their crop into something that can be sold for a premium twelve months a year, and success breeds good breeding. Grinding poverty tends to bring out the desperate in all of us. Oak Glen farmers, and agritourism operators in general, need to cooperatively develop business plans that do more than just pay the bills. We're not saffron-robed ascetics up here, casting wild-flower seed to keep aging hippies happy on their mountain sojourn. We have families, property taxes, compliance costs--and we need to turn a profit!

Could it be that Blackie Wilshire was on to something years ago, when he said, during Prohibition, "well, you could sell a lug of apples for a quarter or a pint of Apple Brandy for $5."

Here's to hoping Oak Glen comes up with more five dollar ideas.

Less Screens, More Scenes

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:14:00 EDT

We've added new sod to the south side of the Public House (below), and yesterday, we put 3,000 new strawberry plants into the ground. (I actually saw my first little green strawberry yesterday.)

Mallory is working on summer camp marketing, and she (continued below)...

sent me this article about a mom who wanted to send her child on lots of different, challenging summer day camp experiences and found that most of them were little better than TV-dominated day care centers. Some of the places had nothing but sixteen year olds working for them, with no one "..over the age of 21... to prepare more interactive and creative...activities."

Well, judging by that standard, we are the gold-plated, collector's edition Ferrari of summer day camps, because we feature non stop activities by professional living historians who spend the whole year educating kids.

Now--how to get that message out?

Anniversaries II

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:33:00 EDT

Happy Birthday, Will.

It's a beautiful day out there today, nothing like the day Mary and I tied the knot here on the farm--in an April snowstorm 21 years ago. The cold was so intense that afternoon, that one of my dad's salesmen stood too close to a propane heater and unwittingly coaxed a smolder out of his toupee. My nephew Danny was having trouble pronouncing his "R"s back then and he blurted out, "Heah, misto yo how is borning." ("Heah, Mister, you're hair is burning.")

They say weather on your wedding is good luck, and that's been true for us: six kids, same business, near constant companionship...and still friends. Praise be to the Almighty.

When I was a younger man, I can remember women obsessing over their hair, and wondering which bouffant would do the trick to win the man of their dreams. To this day, I don't think I've ever heard a guy friend say, "don't you just love her hair?" It's not even in the top ten list of qualifications. I can tell you that men--gentlemen anyway--are far more attracted to the old world virtues than the female lipstick-and-glitter press would have you believe. In my case, Mary had an aura of hard work and optimism about her--a cheerfulness about business, about entrepreneurial ideas, about work that was the precise opposite of the shoe-and-dress-and-purse shopaholic I had dated just before her. If Mary were ever a feminist, she hid it pretty well. (Men may marry a woman who whines about the glass ceiling, but they won't be happy with the sound of the pounding and the breaking and the shattering.) I wonder if there wasn't something cosmic about God's promise to Adam, to provide him a "helpmate." God didn't say, "I will provide him a big-haired woman who will shop him to death." He promised someone who would "help" him.

So..anyway..girls, if you want to catch a husband, learn the virtues of hard work. It's a lot sexier than you think. There's no bigger turn-off among men than the words "high maintenance."

Black Angus

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:19:00 EDT

We are now the proud owners of an Angus bull, two cows, and two little calves. We hope this mini-herd can be turned out onto fenced pasture land within the next year or so, and that we can have a kind of mini-cattle company around these parts--mostly for signature Riley's Farm barbecue beef patrons. Scott doesn't want the herd to get very large, so look for corn-fed-beef of the boutique ranch style soon.

Yesterday, I saw a picture of a very, very rotund guy at San Diego's Earth Day celebration, holding up a sign lamenting beef-eating as the number one cause of global warming. There is a charitable way to look at this: the Almighty writes comedy on occasion, even farce, and it is quite possible that brazen fools are placed along life's road as highway-bollards, warning pilgrims where the sticky idiot-pits are to be found. You see literally thousands of these bollards on college campuses. Sometimes they encircle the place entirely.

Consider Notre Dame. There's a school that is becoming more and more "faith-based" in name only with the administration actually opting for more idiot-bollards than classrooms. Not only does the school invite V----a Monologues onto campus, and deviant film festivals, they've extended a commencement address invitation to the most radically pro-abortion president in American History. Middle class parents: don't send your kids to college. Buy them books.

..and a barbecue beef sandwich.

International People-Hating Day

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 01:24:00 EDT

Google tells me tomorrow is Earth Day, and I suppose I look upon that reality with the same veiled disgust Bill Maher reserves for people of faith. I just don't get either the liturgy, or the zeal, or the tide-pool pilgrimages associated with worshiping what is really a whorish nightmare of a mother--the earth. Think about the unrepentant shrew for a minute: she gives us earthquakes, tornadoes, firestorms, tsunamis, draughts, pestilences, sink-holes, avalanches, plagues, locusts, maggots, monsoons, and village-charring, baby-burning volcanoes. Most of you are reading this in an air-conditioned room somewhere, because the earth, quite simply, is too inhospitable a place to allow for any contemplative work--without shielding yourselves from her heat, wind, rain, and dust. She doesn't even have a very good defense against asteroids. She just whirls on through space like a floozy through the ether, without much care for her young ones. If she were a mother, the cosmic authorities would be writing her up.

Her kids, on the other hand--human beings--are the ones we should have an international celebration for. They build cool adobe bungalows against the heat, and warm alpine cabins against the cold. They selectively breed wild, stingy berries and turn them, over the generations, into fat, juicy strawberries. They turn wild ferrell birds into fat-egg dropping chickens. They carve homes out of oaks and ships out of ore. They harness hydrogen and carbon and steel and send explorers into space. They write symphonies, and poetry, and divine morality plays like "Nicholas Nickleby."

People--at least the reclaimed s0rt--are worth celebrating, not their welfare witch of a mother-Gaia.

When I ponder this extravaganza, I can't help thinking of what I'm ashamed to say is a fellow Stanford man, Paul R. Ehrlich, the father of Earth Day. He's the author of "The Population Bomb," who compared human population growth to cancer and who concluded with these words:

"(We need) compulsory birth regulation... (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size."

Since the writing of this book, earth-worshippers have learned to temper their rhetoric, but Ehrlich took off their mask--at the very birth of their movement. Earth Day, at its root, is deeply anti-human. Only the Communist Chinese are barbarian enough to make Ehrlich's desires policy, but the rest of the world, when talking up the "earth friendly," are really talking about controlling human populations, even if they don't admit it. In America, we're civil enough to make child-rearing merely expensive, by burying expensive environmental studies and rat-friendly mitigation work into the price of a home, but we're really limiting our populations by making large families very expensive. It's the same environmental crap in a different, slightly more procedural, wrapper.

I don't mean to spoil your earth day. I just want you to remember that your children, your parents, your cousins, your friends, are far more important than the dirt upon which you trod, even if Paul Ehrlich says otherwise. It's something to think about whenever you see all the friendly little blue globes everywhere.

The guy who invented this holiday hates you and all your kin.

Tea Parties Now and Then

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:49:00 EDT

Now: My untrained eye estimated approximately 300 people at the intersection of Yucaipa and Bryant yesterday, with heavy crowds on all four corners, and colossal good cheer on the part of the protestors to hear so many motorists blaring their horns in loud support of the notion that we are over-taxed as a people. One mother, commenting on the economic slavery to come, hand-crafted a huge sign that read "My Child is Not Your A.T.M."

The idea behind modern political street theater (the Rileys weren't the only ones wearing three cornered hats and sporting the Gadsen Rattlesnake flag) is that a memory will be stirred up in the hearts of the public. That memory, of an ancestry that fought and bled to protect "unalienable rights," may find its way into the voting booth and we can peacefully turn out the current generation of pensioned blood-suckers occupying public office. There are plenty of them in both parties, and their essential characteristic is this: they see the tax-base not as a means to build bridges and protect the homeland, but as a means to hand out jobs, contracts, and goodies to their cronies and constituents. In an era of declining personal morality, there isn't a voter anywhere who isn't susceptible to the message "it's all those _______ (fill in your favorite enemy's) fault." The public trough, to these politicians, is the vast ocean of revenue made possible by people who work for a living. As one old man put it to me yesterday, in the form of a riddle:

"What's the difference between a congressman and a thief?"

"I'm having trouble deciding," I said.

"You can arrest a thief."

The simple truth is that there can be no political liberty without political leadership willing to protect private property. Once you begin taxing one class of people to pay for another, the hard-working either leave, or stop working, and you run out of goodies to spread around. As Margaret Thatcher put it, "the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money."

I'm hoping the current generation of protestors understands that this is not a partisan issue. It's not a matter of Bush or Obama, Clinton or Palin. Both parties have proven they think they know how to spend your money better than you do. I'm also hoping the pastors of America realize that tax-gluttony on the part of our leaders is a deeply spiritual issue, that they begin to remind their flocks they are not very good Christians or Jews if they elect "statesmen" who are willing to steal from them in the name of good stewardship. I can at least hope the pastors of Americas discover their manhood, even if I saw precious few of them out there yesterday.

Then: even though the Boston tea party of December 1773 had a measure of street theater about it, there were, of course, vast differences to contemplate. In the first place, representation was a critical issue in the 18th century controversy. The idea of having absolutely no say in the taxes a foreign legislature places upon you was, and is, a critical threat to individual liberty. Even with representation, the prospect of 51% of the people deciding they can expropriate the wealth of 1% of the population has to be called what it is: democratic theft. If you live in a democracy of cannibals, it is no comfort to know that you were at least democratically voted into the stew pot. The next generation bearing the mantle of sons of liberty need to do more to protect the liberties of economic minorities. Income taxes and death taxes need to be eliminated entirely, in favor of consumption taxes, or tariffs. The raising of tax levels should have a 3/4 barrier in our legislatures and not a paltry 2/3. Pastors, again, this is a spiritual issue. If you vote for a thief, you are a thief.

The Boston Tea Party was also a secret affair. To this day, we're not sure who participated and who didn't. The participants didn't blog about it, and most didn't even mention it on their death beds. It was also, very clearly, a crime against property--specifically intended to protest an even greater crime against property. The participants were willing to risk mass prosecution because they had faith in each others' silence, which really amounted to a kind of blood oath. A year earlier, when 400 Rhode Island men burnt a revenue schooner to the water line, the British authorities couldn't find anyone to testify against them. Call it what you like--but that is solidarity of a sort we can't even imagine today. Today, if you even mention the Constitution as a standard we should re-invigorate, the Department of Homeland Security puts you on a list.

Finally, the original sons of liberty had spiritual ballast. The pastors of the day were willing to talk about a Christ who cared about justice in this human sphere. Certainly there were Tory apologist pastors and firebrand Whigs, but neither party spent as much of their time filtering the message through their own "church-growth" parameters. Christ was King everywhere--not just in the sanctuary.

Let him who has ears to hear, hear.

Up on Cripple Creek, She Sends Me..

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:57:00 EDT

There's an ailment common to many Oak Glen fathers: we don't really like taking vacations. Greg Anton told me his father, Wally, was very hesitant to leave this little valley. He would ask his kids "mountains or beach?" hoping they would say mountains, and thus be tricked into staying on the hill. I know that Benita is hard pressed to push Scott off the mountain as well. As for me, I tell the kids, "we live in paradise. Why leave?"

My wife, Mary the Greek, has responded to this reality by making vacations, for me, something like the arrival of ABC's Extreme Makeover super-bus. All I have to do is show up, and I'm whisked away without worry. My clothing is packed. My contact lens paraphernalia is neatly readied. My favorite snack foods are purchased--in ample supply. If you've ever seen BBC's version of P.G. Wodehouses, "Jeeves & Wooster" where Jeeves could prepare English morning tea & cream with nothing but a cow in the meadow and a tin of Earl Grey in his coat pocket, you know something about Mary's resourcefulness.

This time, we landed in San Simeon State Park, in the Washburn campground, where a neat little grove of pine shaded the grassy berm behind the campsite. This tree-canopy looked out upon one of those pastoral vistas that made 18th century gentlemen stop to sharpen their quills and summon up verse by the lambent light of memory. In the distance, of course, was the gentle Pacific, framing the whole western horizon, lapping up onto a forest of Eucalyptus, and then on to the coffee-tilled earth of what looked like a new vineyard in the making. In nearly every direction there was that milky green flourish of pasture grass, and in certain lights you could see distinct herds of cattle moving over and behind the shadow of hills impossibly far away. The highest ridges, in the distance, were covered with oak forests that implied a kind of Tolkienesque mystery of yet more vistas, more rolling valleys, more "cattle on a thousand hills." It was a battle-commander's vista--without the battle.

My beef with vacations, generally, is that they can't compete with that very Tolkienesque power of imagination, or that Madison Avenue version of the RV sitting next to the Montana lakeside--with no one else around and three pound steelheads jumping into the frying pan of their own accord. Imagination, however, can actually be less spectacular than reality. There's a blue flower that comes up on the meadows outside Santa Maria, and it splays out across the pasture grass in misty indigo clouds that roll along with the wind. You would have to wait for a dream to witness a steel black Angus feeding in blankets of blue meadow, but sometimes you get to see just such things on vacation.

We camped with two other families, and two of the eight year old boys, before the tents were even pitched, had a flashlight and a magnifying glass out to examine the tracks in the spring mud. The doors on the cars were just barely open, and Sam and Lockton were busy turning a dog print into the signs of a bear that had just passed through.

"Is that a bear, Mr. Riley?"

"Looks like a dog," I said.

The two of them appeared disappointed by my candor.

"Hmmm," I said, looking again, "maybe so. Maybe a bear cub."

They seemed satisfied with the possibility they were now tracking the wild.

Eric and Nicholas and Lockton and Samuel set up their tent. Mary brought me an extra jacket, and a chair. Within a few minutes, the campfire was picking up strength, and she handed me a glass of chardonnay.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"Couldn't be any better," I replied.

So Many Channels...

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:02:00 EDT

It is true that there is a lot of road kill out there on the internet video highway, but the people who put together these Improv Everywherestunts prove there is more originality on the street than there is in the offices of programming executives. I haven't taken the time to research how this outfit is funded, but they certainly seem to be generating enough of an audience for someone to make some money off advertising--and the stunts are really inventive. This one, with 2.9 million views, may not be news to you, but it's pure genius, and this one is no less impressive. Let the media giants and the failed leviathan corporations and the unresponsive government agencies go bankrupt, as far as I'm concerned. We'll get better results starting over, from the ground up.

..And here's a fascinating documentary/reality show from the BBC with a unique premise: Gather twelve people, five of whom have been treated for mental health care issues--ranging from anorexia to bipolar disorder--and send them on a retreat with three psychiatrists for a week. Can the psychiatrists determine who has been treated for what? I won't give away the ending, but it becomes apparent that at least one of the "mental health" care professionals looks like he might be slightly more unhinged than the patients. Over the course of their observations, a few of the diagnostic tests seemed intriguing, but human beings are too complex, and too evasive, for psychiatry to claim the sort of primacy it has earned in public policy. It's really a kind of wacky, secular religion. The three mental health care professionals in this show were suitably humbled, but the "science of the human mind" is used by modern tyrants to deprive people of their liberty, with far more power and range than the Spanish Inquisition every enjoyed. We would be much better off replacing our dependence on therapeutic counseling with pastors, chaplains, and rabbis who consult the ancient texts and dispense universal, immutable truths--as opposed to therapeutic evaluations upon which no two sets of credentials can agree.

The Smell of Anschluss in the Morning

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 11:41:00 EDT

The police state never arrives all at once. It creeps up on you.

One of our vendors only accepts C.O.D. Money order, so we sent Brandon, one of our staff members, down to the post office with $3,400 in cash to buy one. The Postal Clerk said, "how much?"

"$3,400."

"Fill this out."

The post office wanted Brandon's full name, date of birth, driver's license number, social security number, address, and the reason he needed a money order. It also stated, clearly, that the information was strictly voluntary. Brandon, sensing that this was all the information someone would need to begin identity theft, responded:

"This is not mandatory."

"It's voluntary," said the postal worker, "but if you don't fill it out, I can't give you the money order."

"What if I ask for two money orders for $1700 each?"

"No can do. Now that I know you need more than $3,000, I need all this information."

Brandon, to his great credit, responded: "Never mind then. I'll get it somewhere else."

Last week, an air traveler, carrying cash in an airport, was harassed, belittled, and intimidated by TSA workers for responding to their questions with the simple inquiry: "Am I legally obliged to give you that information?" The traveler recorded the conversation and you can listen to it here. For more or less the last twenty years, if you want to identify yourself as a radical, a criminal, or a terrorist--carry cash. What used to be seen as a sign of thrifty self-sufficiency is now seen as an indicator of malevolent intent. In the early 1980s, some of my father's east coast manufacturers purchased Italian lace-making machines for cash, as per the demand of the manufacturer. They traveled to Italy with literally tens of thousands of dollars in their carry-on luggage. At the time, they said it made them a little nervous, but only because thieves might steal their money. It never occurred to them that their own government might be their persecutor.

Let's face it: the War on Terror was a huge farce. Our soldiers served honorably, but we trashed the Constitution at home in order to prop it up, and we made our boys die to install a religious state in Iraq. (The Iraqi Constitution specifically and emphatically states that no law can ever contradict Islam, which lays the groundwork for denying religious freedom, which is "guaranteed" a bit further down in the document.)

A time honored principle of English justice is the simple provision that you are not required to testify against yourself, that you are presumed innocent until the state proves its case beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt.

If we give that up, we're little better than the goose-stepping robots who marched into Salzburg and sent the Von Trapp family flying for the hills.

Conspiracy Theory

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:38:00 EDT

I haven't been journaling as much, because I've been thinking Summer quite a bit, and getting ready for it--what crops to seed, what advertising venues to consider, where to rent a chipper for our apple prunings, what sort of out door furniture to put underneath the grape arbor. Sometimes, when you run a business, the temptation is just to train your staff on execution issues--to write "to do" lists for them, but the older I get the more I realize that harnessing your staff's intellect is the most important thing you can do. Maricella put our bakery items on display outside the order window--and presto--sales went up. Krystle and Mary Johns put a rack of fifes and newspapers outside the gift store, and--zappo--historic document and fife sales went up.

Really, though, "conspiracy" has been on my mind, because when you don't have cable or Dishnet, sometimes you spend your late night hours typing "documentary" into YouTube, filtering for last week's posts, and then sorting by viewcount. You get LOTS of conspiracy theory, from left, right, center, and straight out of this universe.

On one level, of course, it all seems very nutty. It's hard to imagine George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, and Joe Biden running around in Masonic Aprons, bowing down to a huge owl in the forest. (Would they let Joe Biden in? Now that would have to be particularly poor conspiracy planning.) I don't get it. I had a really inglorious rush season at Stanford, and I've never really been a club-joiner, so I see it all as something like the Flintstone episode where Wilma and Betty tried to sneak into the lodge and got their hind ends spanked as part of the initiation ritual--wearing great fur-caps with horns sticking out over each ear. It just seems patently, outrageously absurd.

On the other hand, what is the most common thing you hear in daily conversation?

"..just between you and me..."

We are secretive beings by nature. Do you think that when Senator Chris Dodd arranged for the cozy Countrywide mortgage and the neat little Irish estate, courtesy, ultimately, of the taxpayer, he made a big sunlight show of talking it up on the floor of the Senate? Do you think that when the AIG bonus language was put back in the bailout bill, the treasury department composed a press release of the last minute, secretive action for the New York Times? Why do we think there are "sunshine" and "Brown Act" laws to begin with? Public officials don't really enjoy scrutiny. Even if conspiracy sounds downright nutty, it also sounds downright plausible.

A little more than two years ago, the Federal Reserve just announced that they would no longer publish M3 (money supply) statistics. Presto--changeo. They claimed it cost $1.5 million to calculate how much money was in circulation, so, get this, they were "saving money."

We can give away trillions of dollars to the International Monetary Fund, Wall Street Banks, and the "too big to fail" corporations who have created the mess in the first place, but we can't spend $1.5 million calculating the money supply? Can you imagine a publicly traded company saying, "heah, listen, we just decided not to publish how much stock we have outstanding; it cost too much."

Hello?

The bottom line is that if you're about to do something really, really secretive and despicable--make sure you put on a robe and dance around in the moonlight first.

That way, no one will believe you're up to dirty tricks.

Why Truth Beats Fiction

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 15:17:00 EDT

You can't make this stuff up: According to the Associated Press, an Ohio man was arrested after he was alleged to have consumed fifteen beers, just prior to making too sharp a high speed turn on his motorized bar stool.

It seems to me, in one sense, that's the very stuff of what family legend is made. You can almost imagine the conversation at wedding receptions and birthday parties: "Yeah, that's my Uncle Zack; he got a DUI on his bar stool," followed by "that's him? I heard about this!"

Years ago some of my high school friends stole over the high wall of a monastery at midnight to harrass--I'm sorry to say--the monks. The story is so strange on a number of accounts, even though it's true. In the first place, who lives close to a monastery anymore? In the suburbs? In the 70s? The story goes that one of these teenage ruffians had to scamper up an olive tree and sit in it all night, because a big, barrel-chested Friar Tuck stormed out of the monastery and started pumpking rock salt out of a shotgun.

My wife has a colorful Greek uncle, who--as family lore has it--wandered between mildly pixilated and vaguely dangerous. He was given to making up words, and entire phrases, in a language no one else understood. ("Is that Greek?" strangers would ask, and the Greek relatives would respond, "no one knows what he's saying.") This side of the family was part of the Greek resistance to the Nazis during World War II and "Uncle George" was rumored to have left the love of his life in Greece when he came to America. From all accounts, he was crazy--in more or less an amusing way--until one day, in a fight with a deputy sheriff, he wound up locking the deputy in the trunk of his squad car. When he was arrested, he heard a familiar voice over the wall of the jail--and fell into a conversation with another relative who was arrested on an entirely different matter. Call it a family reunion, I guess.

How is it that events completely beyond the pale in the here and now somehow become gentle legends when considered in the abstract, at a distance? It's nearly suicidal to pursue a life of legend, and people who try to make a legend out of their antics usually wind up hospitalized, dead, or worse, but sometimes the Almighty allows an act born of passion, a sheer piece of momentary idiocy, to stand more or less unrequited by the physical and legal universe. Call it mercy, or comedy, I guess--the Divine sort.

At any rate, don't try any of this at home. No one will believe you.

All I need is loving you and ...

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 12:06:00 EDT

One of these days, I'm going to make a systematic study of what a singer means, when she turns to the band and says, "Key of G, fellas." (I mean I know a tad, but not as much as you could find out reading this article and pondering it for a few weeks.)

The kids are downright aching to play music these days, so I'm trying to figure out what a reasonable family ensemble objective might be with suitably 18th century flavor. I downloaded a new version of Cakewalk yesterday, tooled around with my new fife in the key of F, tried to accompany David Thomas on the guitar in the public house, asked Freeman a few questions about keyed instruments, waxed more confused, then went to playing with the innumerable MIDI settings on banks, patches, and the like, and finally got Cakewalk outputting acoustic grand piano sound on three tracks. I typed in the melody line for a fife tune that was played on the morning of April 19, 1775 at Lexington--the White Cockade. I wondered what harmony or counter melody might sound like in three parts. Here's my first try at three part something or other. (Turn up the speakers, but not too loud.)

Dunno what I did there--whether it's harmony, counter-melody, or just pure "dissonance." It sounds a little too "barber-shoppy" to me for the 18th century. There's a maddening phrase you see quite a bit when you read about 18th century folk music. It usually goes something like this: "crude scores were written on broadsides and in the journals of itinerant country musicians, but the ensemble was expected to come up with their own harmonies."

Now, I just need to see whether any "itinerant country musician" wrote a harmony somewhere, and if someone has been kind enough out there in internet land to sequence it for me--as an example. Then I have to figure out parts for piano, tin whistle (6 keys to choose from), fife (two keys to choose from so far), fiddle, and recorder, and...voice.

Fun, frustrating stuff..

Father Knows Best

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:09:00 EDT

I find movies like Liam Neeson's "Taken" better than Sunday School. Think about it; there's more truth bundled in this revenge drama than in most church teaching today: 1) there are evil disgusting people in the world, 2) when someone has the courage to put them down like the dogs they are, we should celebrate that strength 3) fathers have an instinct for the danger facing their children and that instinct should be honored, 4) teenage girls shouldn't be traveling in foreign capitals by themselves 5) when bureaucratic functionaries value their jobs over justice, they become part of the evil they claim to be fighting, and 6) Islam--with its "one morality for us, another for the Kuffars"-- doesn't exactly make for a happy sing-along at the U.N. peoples' choir.

People of faith hear the words of the Psalmist (58:10): "The righteous shall rejoice when he seeth the vengeance: he shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked," but there is a disconnect when it is played out either in reality, or in film. (I'm not sure if fellow theater goers appreciated my whispered cheer--'send the little jackal back to hell!') After all, it's probably a good thing that we have a sense of mercy, written on our hearts, or we would all be something like the savage Druids and Celts and Aztecs and Animists from which we descend. However, there is also a false mercy operating in our own generation that keeps Charlie Manson eating meals and reading fan mail in prison. Obviously, we need to be a nation of laws, not of men, but the sort of human vermin that kidnap travelers for sale into the harem-trade know that very proceduralism works in their favor. A public firing squad for the authors of these cartels--and they do exist--would be good for the soul of the nation, and for the safety of international travelers.

Granted, I don't quite buy Liam Neeson as an American. I think the story would have been equally effective if he had played an IRA partisan, retired from the troubles, and brought back into the fray by the theft of his daughter. I could also do without car chases, and, of course, the plot is full of the outright improbable, but in a generation given to mutant special powers, it's nice to see a morality play chronicled with more probable human weapons--knives, slamming doors, guns, hammers, and electrical voltage liberally applied.

Apparently, the film is making more money than the producers thought it would.

Is it any wonder?

Breakfast in the Colonies

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 11:16:00 EDT

I'm fast approaching, with any discipline today, a "10 Pound Loss" mark on Weight-Watchers. Actually, it's a little more complicated than that. I started an account with Weight-Watchers online about eighteen months ago, and lost ten pounds over about 12 weeks. The resulting increase in energy and the reduced blood pressure made me feel something like the Papa figure in The Incredibles and I entered a long Holiday eating binge that lasted from Thanksgiving of 2007 to about Labor Day of 2008. (The Holidays are always tough.) The shameful truth is that I charged right on past the original "panic weight," (the weight that made me say to myself 'you, Jim Riley, are a big fat DISGUSTING slob'), and proceeded to take on another ten pounds of ballast by way of celebrating my previous discipline. Well, my nephew, Quinn approached me one night at Sunday family dinner and said:

"Uh, Uncle Jim?"

"What is it, Quinn?"

"You need to get some exercise."

"Quinn," I said. "Thank you very much for that. I know you are mad at me for changing the channel, but there is a grain of truth in what you are saying to your dear old Uncle. Would you get me another one of those peanut butter cookies?"

What followed, over the next few months, was kind of a rolling ocean wave of up and down--peas and popcorn one week, triple lasagne and family sized jars of roasted almonds next week--followed by another period of steely resolve that now brings me back to the starting perch again--the platform, the weight base camp--where I can make the assault on that far away goal of my desired mass--which in truth is about 20 pounds more than the goggle-eyed, death-march dieticians would say is my ideal "healthy" weight. I am 6' 4" and by some weird calculus I'm supposed to be, like 190-200 pounds, but I would settle for five pounds less than my honeymoon, twenty-eight year old weight of 225 pounds. 'The Mighty 220' I call it.

The trouble is that we bake something like 150 apple pies a day, and we feature really good sausage and omelet breakfast platters, and it's not that you can't have that from time to time. You can. But taking just one or two sausages, for me, is something like giving yourself just a tiny little peak out the window at Yosemite, or allowing yourself five seconds of The High Kings' Parting Glass. If something is good, I mean you want to kind of indulge.

Those big one pound bricks of Trader Joe's Milk Chocolate. An entire box of Costco Croissants. A salty, buttery jar of Planter's Dry Roasted Peanuts.

Do I reach the Mighty 220 and then kind of pig-out for the Holidays, or can you make an indulgence out of discipline itself? Can moderation ever be as belly-rich as two plates of Penne Rustica at the Macaroni Grill? It must be part of our condition as humans.

Mother Eve would have something to say on the matter.

Fifes & Pianos & Music & Such...

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:05:00 EDT

Sometime last year, during one of our dinners, I sat down with a guest and asked him his profession. He was the conductor of an orchestra, and his wife was a composer. Now, keep in mind, I'm very proud of our musicians here, but it's always a little intimidating knowing that the audience might hold a Carnegie Hall or a Feature Film type out there.

Rod Stewart once claimed you only needed to know three chords to be a rock star and I think a lot of well-packaged pop music is 70% charisma, 28% technical assistance, and 2% musical training, but even with all of that, in the era of shrink-wrapped, downloadable, "slick" entertainment, most people don't trust themselves to even dabble in music. Truth be told, I get a little annoyed with people who don't even want to try singing. Freeman House, our fiddler, will tell you that Jim Riley shouldn't even try singing either, not because I have pitch issues, but because I make up my own version of the tune--which of course makes the whole ensemble thing sort of difficult.

We started paying for piano and fiddle lessons a few years ago and I was worried that the kids were looking upon the whole thing as a chore, but then for some reason everything popped and they all wanted to join the family band (which in this case is headed by the musical mama and papa--Freeman and Kathy). It's been a real joy to hear them working on tunes, checking out Irish flutes on the internet, and coveting baby Grands down at Oak Valley Piano. (One of the few places you can actually go and play a piano before buying it. Highly recommended.)

Moral of the story: play good music around the house, keep paying for the lessons, and then let them play something well enough, in front of the public, to get a little praise--and they will be hooked.

The other issue is that Americans should really begin taking more responsibility for their own music. They should start turning off the radio, the Pod, the CD-Player and start buying sheet music. We need to start singing our own songs again!

The Hard Loving, Hard Living Fellowship

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:11:00 EDT

After yesterday's post on branding criminals, I saw this video of a break-in "artist" caught on tape. Watch it to the end. I don't think you would have to brand this guy. He's self-branding. (He also seems to be very nearly indestructible.)

I also received a critique of my Bristol Palin lament the other day, and I was reminded that "only Jesus was without sin. Bristol Palin is not our role model; Jesus is our role model." I guess I find that sort of response a tad disorienting. It actually makes me a little dizzy. It would be something like finding out your house painter had completely paint-splattered your patio, your pool, your cactus garden, and your dog, but he isn't even trying to clean up. He is, in fact, pulling out of your driveway. He's saying, "see you tomorrow-maybe." When you ask him about the mess, he says, "heah. Only Jesus is perfect."

In another sense, it would be like hearing Jesus Himself tell the story of the Good Samaritan only to have someone in the crowd respond, "okay, okay, I get it, Lord. It's okay to ignore wounded people on the roadside because only you are perfect, right? The Samaritan was, like, doing the legalistic thing, trying to work his way to heaven, and.."

<<deep sigh>>

It all brings me back to the sort of faith community I would design if I were a playwright capable of speaking the "city on a hill" into existence. Here's my version of what a "real" Christian church would look like:

	The Perfect Church Community -- By Jim Riley
	1.	First of all: It probably wouldn't allow me as a member. If my Bristol critique made someone think I hold myself out as "not needing Jesus," then I should make it clear: I'm probably too selfish and impulsive to be a member of a community that really "took up its cross" daily. I say this to make clear what shouldn't need to be clarified: the speaker may sully the idea, but that doesn't make the idea any less important. Another way of putting it: just because we might not ever be Navy SEALs doesn't mean we don't need their services.
	2.	No wimps, no whiners: the guys who hung out with Christ were tough dudes--ready to lop off an ear at the sign of an insult. Yes, they were meek, but it was a meekness that came out of strength of spirit, not out of cowardice. Ideally, everyone in a real Christian church should know how to shoot; they should know how to put the hurt on wrong-doers, even if they know the value of restraint. Believe it or not, I once encountered two teenage Christian boys who swore they wouldn't even defend their own mother from a murderer. Lord save us from that sort of cowardice--and from the pastors who preach it. Christ turned the other cheek, but he also turned the tables--and braided the whip.
	3.	No False Holiness: Everyone in a real Christian church should be more or less who they are--not who they think they should be, unless that ideal really is scriptural. I've had it with people who pretend the joke isn't funny because it doesn't seem "grave enough" or "reverent." The same God who waxed sick of hungry complainers and threatened to give them meat until it came out their noses (Numbers 11), has a powerful sense of the comic. I don't trust anyone who doesn't have a sense of humor.
	4.	Be Political, Make it Relevant: John the Baptist got right in Herod's face. We should too. Paul makes it clear that any leader who isn't a terror unto evil and a rewarder of good, isn't really a leader by God's standards. Pastors who preach abject obedience to evil are evil, and any pastor who isn't political these days, really isn't a pastor. Shepherds feed the flock, but they fight off wolves too.
	5.	Have a Drink, Throw a Feast: You've heard me preach it before. The Wedding at Cana? The return of the Prodigal Son? Christians should have a good time. We have good news to celebrate. I'm not a very good dancer, but Christians should dance, play music, sing. King David made a few mistakes, but not while he was playing music. This is not, of course, an excuse for drunkenness or substance abuse; it is a recognition that Christ gave us wine to make our hearts glad. Don't make a gospel out of turning down His gift.
	6.	Live the real commandments--not the gospel hobbies: We should spend more time crucifying ourselves for dishonesty, murderous hatreds, covetousness, infidelity, casual sabbaths, dishonoring parents--and we should spend less time on rapture rumination, diet holiness, and weird fads like "Christian environmentalism." We should spend more time taking scripture to life and less time putting Christian labels on junior college curriculum.
	7.	Sex is not the enemy--infidelity is: Married Christian couples should have a Song of Solomon love life. They should get married young and have a lot of kids. Love is not a feeling that settles down on you. It's a decision. It is not "fate." It is "will." Christian "singles" and Christian "youth" culture--with serial dating, serial sensuality, and, at its very worst, serial abortion--is an abomination. Don't wait for your education to get married. Get married and educate each other. Don't spend your youth slumming through one heart-break after the next. Try to earn what a papa owns when his little boys run through the front door to give him a hug at night.
	8.	Covenant is Everything: Why are we tithing to these mega-church audio-visual ministries when we could be tithing to each other, in real Christian communities, that would be unafraid to speak the truth? When a church gets too large, it starts operating like a franchise, or a businesses, and the gospel suffers. Keep it small. Keep it covenantal. The burden of one should be the burden of all--and the rest of the world should learn from that relationship. We wouldn't have this monstrous, hideously inefficient welfare state if Christians really cared for each other.
	9.	Discipline the Remnant: the best and worst things about some "Christian Independents" is their very independence. Just because some of us pull ourselves out of the mainstream church, doesn't mean we've really replaced it until and unless we learn to submit to each other. I've seen a lot of the remnant claim, in effect, they are the "remnant of the remnant" because of their peculiarly keen collection of liturgical theories and domestic routines. It comes off as just plain nutty. Do not divide over non-essentials.
	10.	Be the best at what you do: John Winthrop effectively said this was his wish for the Bay Colony. "Let it be as in New England." Ideally, a community of believers should be so devoted to doing their work well that others say, "those guys are the best doctors, the best lawyers, the best film-makers, the best brick-layers you can find."

Okay, so who wants to join up? Show of hands?

The Swift Economy of Colonial Justice

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:23:00 EDT

Here are just a few incidents of crime and punishment as they were administered throughout the colonies in the years 1768 through 1770 and chronicled by the Portsmouth New Hampshire Gazette. Contrary to what you might assume, crime was not a major feature of colonial newspapers. In this era, correspondents were far more interested in political intrigue and the ideas surrounding the rights of free men. You have to really look, in other words, for a crime blotter, and when crime was reported, unlike today, it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. You read about the crime itself, the trial, and the punishment.

I would argue the speediness of this justice is good for the soul of any society. You aren't left, as a citizen, with the angst of hearing about the villainy of one barbarous act after the next, followed by years of procedural maneuvering and the prospect of a smug criminal laughing at the system after a few years of watching Jerry Springer in the can; you have the satisfaction of knowing that the enormity of the crime was met with the enormity of punishment. Attempted rapists were publicly shamed and whipped, burglars were branded with a "B" on the forehead, murderers were hanged, and even common criminals proposed their own punishment, administered by the victims, without the censure of the local magistrate.

Those of us outside today's criminal justice apparatus tend to see our own system as erring on the side of caution, mercy, and the rights of the accused, but the reality is much more cynical. What we call "criminal justice" today is primarily a jobs program. Every new rapist, every new burglar, every new murderer represents money to the system--new jobs for jailers, new jobs for prison builders, more billable hours for detectives, social workers, psychiatrists, more fund-raising letters for various silly sisters of mercy who put Berkeley post-grads to work, trying to make the world safe for arsonists and child-killers. Follow the money. What we are paying for today has nothing to do with either justice for the victim or mercy for the accused. It has everything to do with handing out more state pensions to people who have the gall to say they are "reforming" criminals. Our system, in the last analysis, at a time of budget constraint, certainly has no respect for the tax-payer.

Think of the sheer beauty and simplicity of burning a burglar with a brand-iron "B" on the forehead. This was done in public, before children, as an example of bad behavior. For the rest of his life, the burglar carried with him a very efficient background check and a collosal incentive to reform himself. Imagine the man who truly wanted to change, after a life of crime. He had to work harder to win his fellow citizens' trust, and in the faces of those who reacted to his branded flesh, he had a reminder--every day--to change his ways. If he did continue in a life of crime, the judge could see, immediately, without the benefit of a computerized rap-sheet, what sort of offender he had before him.

We have come very far, on many fronts, as a society, but we are fooling ourselves if we really think we have become more merciful, and more "progressive" in the arena of criminal justice.

To wit:

Boston, April 23, 1770 In the present Term of the..Court, one George White was convicted of Burglary, in breaking into the House of Mr. John Moffatt, and had the Benefit of the Clergy, being burnt in the Hand, he was also convicted of breaking into the Province House and stealing, for which he was sentenced to be branded in the Forehead with the Letter B and to pay Cost; he was also convicted upon other Indictments against him for stealing, on each of which he has been sentenced to be whipt 20 Stripes, to pay treble damages and Cost.

Portsmouth, August 11,(1769) Friday last came on at the Superior-Court then sitting, the Trial of one Arthur Meloy, of this Town, a Man near 60 Years old, for abusing and attempting a RAPE...last Wednesday being the Day appointed for him to make his public Appearance in this Character, at Eleven A.M. he was mounted on a Stage before the State-House, erected for the Purpose on which he was Pillory'd, and there remained one Hour, a Spectacle to a great Concourse of People, he was then taken down and conducted to the Whipping-Post, where after receiving 15 Lashes...

(Charleston, SC, May 1, 1769) On Wednesday Matthew Turner, late a Mariner on Board the Ship Bacchus of Liverpool, was arraigned...for the Murder of Wililam Harrop, late Master of the said Ship, ...On Friday the 28th after a long and full hearing, the Court unanimously found the said M. Turner Guilty, and sentenced him to be hanged....

New York, December 4, 1769: Last Tuesday one John Campbell, was indicted and convicted of Grand Larceney, and received sentence of death, and is ordered to be executed on Friday, the 22d inst. He is an old offender, and has been crop'd and branded in the Forehead; and said to have been whip'd in South-Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Boston.

HARTFORD, November 27, (1770) In the Evening preceeding the Thanksgiving, a strolling Vagabondly fellow in his way (as he pretended) to Boston, coming into a private House in the eastwardly Part of the Town, in the Habit and Character of a Beggar plausibly sought for Entertainment; calling himself a Native Subject of the King of Denmark, from whose Dominions about Ten years ago he came into this Country; since which among other misfortunes, he has that of losing all the Fingers on one Hand, and free use of those of the other by falling into the Fire in a convulsion-Fit. Being thus recommended to the Pity and Charity of the hospitable Family, commiserating his calamitous Circumstances they could do no other than receive him as their Guest. But as he preferr'd solitary Retirement to Company under a Pretence of not being troublesome to the Family, was introduced to a comfortable Fire in the Kitchen. But while the Family were busy in the other Room, confiding in the Simplicity and Honesty, as well as imbecility of their new guest, he, with several Articles of Value, was soon found to be missing; whereupon with all convenient Speed, the Thief was pursued, and overtaken at a Tavern about a Mile distant, where in merry Mood, he was offering his new Assortment upon Sail (sic) to the highest Bidder. This Merriment might have lasted longer, had it not been interrupted by the true Owner challenging his Property, who after some proper Diversion, bound the apprehended Criminal, for a more easy and convenient Escortment about seven Miles in a retrograde March to a civil Magistrate. But the reluctant Villain, choosing rather to make a present than a future Settlement, made the Proposal, to which, with the Advice of the Company, the indulgent Creditor consented; for the Receipt of which (Matters being thus amicably accomodated) he voluntarily stripping himself receive'd upon the Spot seven hearty Lashes, with a good sturdy Horse-Whip warmly apply'd, which he tamely submitted to and endured with all the Patience and fortitude which his own Circumstances and the Nature of the Thing would well admit of..

The Outlandish Expense of Justice

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:45:00 EDT

Here's a routine story, unfortunately, from the local news about a home invasion robbery that took place ten days ago in Yucaipa. The assailants barged through the homeowners' door, at gunpoint, and duct-taped their victims mouths and eyes. One of the victims was kicked and struck--as their home was being ransacked. After 30 minutes of hearing their belongings removed from their home, and perhaps not knowing whether they would be killed, the home-invaders made off with the victims' car.

Apparently, in this case, the car had a tracking device, and they were captured in a relatively short span of time, but the real injustice is about to begin. The court and jail system will begin to move on this, and they will receive a trial, or perhaps a plea-bargain, as, of course they should. Due process is critical in any nation of laws, but whether you believe in deterrence or not, the sort of human scum that are found guilty of this kind of cruelty are just too expensive to house--and too expensive to let free once the existing jail system has turned them into even more thorough-going monsters than they were before they entered it. The most merciful thing that can be done for criminals of this sort, and for society, is to execute them--publicly, or at the very least, whip them, set them in the pillory, brand them, and cut off their ears--all punishments that were not considered "cruel and unusual" by the very men who wrote the words "cruel and unusual" into our constitution.

Of course, those familiar with our present system will respond, "wait; a death penalty would take forever and be far more expensive than a plea bargain and a few years in prison," but that of course makes the assumption that we should honor our existing body of legal precedent. It assumes we have actually made progress in criminal justice over the last century. We haven't. Lawyers tend to create work for other lawyers, and in the modern era, they make work for prison wardens, correctional officers, social workers, private detectives, police departments, and nurses, doctors, and psychologists. There's a whole constituency getting paid very well to make sure final justice is never rendered. Moreover, the prison system we currently maintain for violent offenders is far more "cruel and unusual" than anything an 18th century mind could possibly have conceived. Can anyone really doubt that a firing squad would be infinitely more merciful to a convicted murderer than a lifetime in solitary confinement? Can anyone really argue that 39 lashes across the bare back and a "Thief" branded on the right hand wouldn't be infinitely more merciful than sending a young lad into a maximum security prison?

It might even do something the monstrously expensive system we now maintain can't do: reform him.

A Little Patrick Henry in the Evening

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:49:00 EDT

This year, we're starting in on our Saturday night public house program, featuring music, hearty food, 18th century sing-a-longs, and the oratory of Patrick Henry. One of the school tour dads, this week, after hearing my version of the son of thunder's speech, said, "we should do a documentary on this place. It's so close to the surface for you. You really live this conflict, as though the wound were still open."

I thought for a moment, and then I said: "I believe in the depravity of man; As they say about the holocaust, 'Never Forget.'"

I used the holocaust for a reason in my response because, the trend in human behavior is to make previous conflicts feel comic, improbable, forgotten--even if the scope of the evil is almost impossible to process in its enormity. That's why the pillaging Redcoats of yesteryear, who struck fear in the hearts of the colonists, have become today's red-woolen dandies. That's why Mel Brooks can get a laugh out of even "Spring Time For Hitler and Germany." As a defense mechanism, or perhaps because we are addicted to what Patrick Henry caled "that phantom of hope," we need to make the truly evil truly improbable. We can't stand the notion that we might have some complicity in it, or some call to oppose it. In another sense, it's why living history can sometimes appear neutral and bloodless--played out by academics and hobbyists who want to see so many different sides of an issue they can't ever settle on single truth of the matter. It was either right, or wrong, to tax the colonists without their consent. It was either right, or wrong, to march on their provincial arsenals and steal their ammunition from them. It was either right, or wrong, to shoot them dead for mustering on a village green.

If we settle on the truth, we have to do something about it, so the tendency is to pretend there is no question at all. It's easy to pretend there isn't a problem with encumbering our grandchildren right into economic long term slavery. It's easy to pretend we can kill off more than a million of our children in the womb every year without understanding that we are living in the middle of a holocaust. It's easy to pretend that our political parties really represent our ideals--when it is becoming more and more clear they are padding their pensions and paying off their donors. On a whole deafening roar of issues, it is easy to pretend there is really no question at all.

But as Patrick Henry said, "the question before the house is one of awful moment for this country."

Indeed.

Let us raise our glass to a man who didn't avoid the question.

Someone to Stand Up for the Bad Guys -- Is the Church Doing Anything, Anywhere?

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:37:00 EDT

A year or two ago, I did a promotional email for St. Patrick's here and I merely re-counted ancient Irish folklore--extolling Patrick's victory over the "cruel, pagan kings of Ireland." If you can believe it, a few Wiccan types wrote back, scolding me for offending their religious sensitivities. Yesterday, pitching An Evening With Patrick Henry, I chose a subject line I thought was reasonably dramatic, but true to the spirit of Patrick Henry's lament, ("...is life so dear..as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?.."). My subject line? "Kick Slavery in the Teeth." Well, someone wrote back last night, calling that extremely offensive. I ridicule Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-Il and Saudi Royalty quite a bit, so I imagine, someday, I'll get a dismissive email from someone protective of dictator self-esteem.

Sheesh. There are some folks so afraid of evil--the very concept of evil--that the reminder itself bothers them. Wickedness, by this way of thinking, goes away if it is never discussed--despite all the historical evidence to the contrary. I think all parents, on one occasion or another, are guilty of taking this position. A bully causes a problem, but pop yells louder at the victim, for seeking justice, than he does at the source of the problem itself. There's yet another brand of evil-aversion typified by that old Marxist, Vanessa Redgrave, who bailed terrorists out of Guantanamo. It goes something like this: no one is perfect, so anyone who seeks justice, by restraining evil, is evil. These people generally lack any sense of degree. Joseph Stalin could kill fifty million Russians, but Joe McCarthy is somehow just as bad, or worse, for making a few false accusations. Vanessa Redgrave--dramatic uber-genius and political village idiot--sees Palestinian casualties as somehow balancing the moral scale against world wide Jihad and the holocaust. (Picture a psychopathic thug responding to a finger-scratch by burning his victim alive; Vanessa would see equivalency here--and maybe even buy the matches.)

Fortunately, this weird attachment to falsehood is rare, if sometimes a bit virulent. If it catches on, it will be difficult to find any measuring cup for evil. You can almost imagine kids running around with Marxist murderers on their t-shirts.

Wait...

Is the Church Really Doing Anything? Anywhere?

Don't get me wrong. I like Sarah Palin. She's not afraid to tote a gun, raise a family, gut a deer, haul in lobster traps, keep her husband happy. She's a babe. She's pro-life. She believes in drilling for oil and making fun of leftist freaks. She believes in a God who gets behind causes, and she obviously has church life. If you have time, you can see some of it here. It's old news, but it shows that Sarah wasn't just doing the politician-in-the-congregation thing, dropping by to pick up votes and checks. She basically states that she grew up in the church, got saved in the church, and saw the church as a force for community--in her community. She had been attending church long enough to watch the pastor grow older. It doesn't seem like a casual relationship, but then take a look at this. How does a family attend a church for so long and then produce a teenager who doesn't even seem to have a rudimentary knowledge of even the basics?

A close friend gave me some insight the other day, when we discussed legalism. Legalism is a favorite dodge of pastors and parents who don't really want to teach God's immutable moral law. But legalism has nothing to do with God's actual commandments and everything to do with mankind's religious inventions. Legalism is making all the men wear dark blue slacks and starched white shirts. Legalism is claiming real Christians are only "alive" if they listen to rock-n-roll praise music, or, conversely, if they only worship using 500 year old hymns. Legalism is claiming you can only be born again if you're pre-millenial, or post-millenial for that matter. Legalism is claiming not even Christ would have a glass of wine. Legalism is pretending the Song of Solomon doesn't exist. Legalism is pretending the Bible has anything definitive to say about tobacco, or Vitamin C for that matter.

The Ten Commandments, however, are not legalisms. They are the very "law written on the heart" that God affirms as a proof of devotion, as the sign of someone who loves and follows Him. If Bernie Madoff had a keener sense of the Ten Commandments, he wouldn't have stolen 50 billion dollars. If Bristol Palin had a keener sense of God's law, she would try very hard to marry the father of her child.

I use this example a lot, but without the law written on the heart--on both believers and non-believers--it would be impossible to run a u-pick orchard. You really can't open an orchard for picking, or a store for buying, if a majority of the customers don't believe there is something deeply wrong with stealing.

It would seem, however, that if Sarah Palin's church life is any guide, America's spiritual leaders are more concerned with jumping straight to forgiveness and more or less squatting right there, on that theological spot, forever. No one is really taught what they need to be forgiven for, or after being forgiven, what standard they should follow.

Pastors, consider Bristol Palin.

How much ignorance can we produce--and still keep the orchard open for picking? Abstinence is not "realistic" today. Will honesty be next?

Blood Loyalty

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:35:00 EDT

There's a rather small, back-water debate going on in conservative circles about the decision of Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston not to get married. Bristol, you will remember, is the teenage daughter of Governor Sarah Palin, who was lauded in pro-life circles for keeping her child and announcing that she would marry the baby's teenage father, Levi Johnston. I was among those applauding. It was a decision that showed respect for life, and for taking responsibility for that life, by giving the toddler a mother and a father. The two of them made a mistake, but they were taking responsibility for that mistake, by having the child, and starting a new family.

Well, it looks like the "new family" part of the deal is on hold. Bristol sold the pictures of her new child to People Magazine for $300,000, and she announced a "mutual" decision not to get married.

I feel something like a fan, rooting for an inglorious underdog on American Idol, only to find out her agent negotiated a big prize money deal, if she agreed to take a fall on stage.

There was a time, in America, when even a divorce meant you were finished in politics--even if the divorce was not your fault. Now, as Teddy Kennedy proves, you can even dump a girl in a river and get nighted for it by the Queen of England. We've gone from a fairly high standard of integrity for both politicians and their families to a sense that everyone screws up, so...whatever...move on people...nothing to see here.

Of course, conservative family-values politicians get raked over the coals far more vigorously for moral failure because they make the mistake of championing the ancient truths in the first place, but it seems that even the "values voters" are reconciled to accepting not just a little personal weakness--but a whole lot of it. When Pat Robertson endorsed Rudy Giuliani last year, it was a signal that some values voters don't believe the political power of those values, or in the likelihood of any politician representing them.

In the instance of Bristol Palin, we are told, first of all, that Sarah Palin bears no blame for her adult daughter's actions--and certainly that is true, to an extent. We hope that Mom's values will influence her children, but Bristol's television admission that "abstinence" is "not realistic," either means Sarah shares her opinion, or Bristol wasn't listening. Since, Sarah, however is the public figure, the one selling conservative family values to the American public, we would expect--at the very least--to hear her response to her daughter's decisions.

It could take a lot of forms: "Maybe I should have spent a little more time teaching and less time governing," or "I gotta tell you, I taught my daughter well, but she made her own decisions, and I don't agree with them," or even "heah, at least she didn't kill her baby, even though I'd like her to take the next logical step and marry Levi." The American public is very forgiving--praise be--but forgiveness begins by admitting a mistake.

It would seem that some sort of public statement is in order, particularly for a politician whose commitment to pro-life values includes a huge personal and self-sacrificial commitment to life, and particularly a politician who advocates personal self-government over the welfare state. Small government is made possible by a people who rule over themselves, and govern themselves--starting with their own families. It's very difficult to argue against the state assuming responsibility for single mothers if you argue--by your actions, or by your failure to comment upon wrong-doing--that fathers aren't important to the raising of children. If Governor Palin doesn't say something, she will be talking up traditional families in the abstract, but living out a matriarchy in the flesh.

What is the argument, by conservatives, against this sort of a statement? Why is Sarah Palin being allowed this inconsistency? It involves her "family." Blood is thicker than water. Even conservatives are arguing that a politician shouldn't have to state what is good and bad behavior, if it means her children's feelings might get hurt. The results of that policy are clear: enter, stage left, the destruction of the very principle itself. No one can argue for a public standard if they won't allow that standard to be scrutinized in their own household. The American people can forgive a mistake, but they can't forgive an unwillingness to even discuss it.

Governor Palin: the little guy deserves a dad--and you should say so.

An Evening, at least, in the Colonies

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:26:00 EDT

Mary took the kids swing dancing last night and I tried to do some cipherin' as to how I get you up here this Saturday night for An Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry. Let's see: great food, fresh rainbow trout, great music, a romantic, post & beam country tavern, and the oratory of Patrick Henry. You can even bring your own wine or hard cider, since we don't sell it. I'm in. Sounds good to me.

America is at war over competing mythologies. I will confess to being completely out of touch with the sort of America that signs onto a "global new deal." If the global economy has taught us anything, it's that a weakness in one spot replicates itself across the water and makes everyone, everywhere, suffer. Where would the world have been without a Churchill or a George S. Patton to check the global ambitions of a Hitler or a Tojo? Why do we pretend that America has anything at all in common with freedom-hating Yemen or slave-holding Mauritania? Global peace is not achieved by handing everyone a Diet Coke and passing out free back rubs. Harmony is not the result of holding inter-faith dialogues with religions and political systems that have absolutely no interest in either peace or compromise. The current administration wants $900 million of your tax dollars to re-build Gaza. What is the lesson for thinking people? It's very simple: if you need construction money, launch rockets against Israel.

Insanity. Get me back to the colonies--for at least for an evening.

St. Patrick's 2009

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 02:41:00 EDT

"The BreastPlate of St. Patrick"

I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.

I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.

Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.

When A Dream is Waking...

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:58:00 EDT

Last night, a room full of very respectful fifth graders gave their rapt attention to my version of Patrick Henry's speech. This afternoon, one of the school tour moms told David Thomas, "Riley's Farm is magic." I couldn't quite hear what she said, so David repeated it: "She said what I believe--this place is blessed." About two hours later, I dropped in on the rehearsal for the "Near St. Patrick's Day Ball at the Old Packing Shed." Logan Creighton sang "Whiskey in the Jar" with a voice that perfectly matched his range. He might as well have been standing on a dry stone wall in County Cork, earning the brotherly laugh of a dozen Irish shepherds. My marine friend, Steve Klein, belted out Rosey O'Grady in a perfect baritone that made me think, "why haven't I put this guy on stage earlier?" Susan Usher put piano to the rhythm and the chords for Danny Boy, and David Thomas punched out the very soul of the tune with a clarity and strength of voice that made me think, "let's have a moment of silence for poor Danny's Da'." Angela Shaddix sang "The Parting Glass," very nearly a cappella, without a written score, and I wanted to hang my head and weep. (The staff sees me get emotional too much, so I held back.)

When I got back to the house my good friend, John Reilly, an Irishman who spent his youth as a bull rider, sent me a card in the mail about St. Patrick's day. I can't quite repeat the joke, but Mary and I had a good laugh. Brandon Ryder was excited about making retail work around here. Jon Harmon loves to see the kids catch a fish for the first time. The bakery--in a recession--sold more pies than ever. Jeff Hammond got in here at 5:00 AM to work on Courage, New Hampshire, and Maricella--fresh from wisdom tooth surgery--helped out working the windows. Jan Thiem--as always--troops on, through colds and storms and icy roads and the duties of a young grandmother, to help make this place work.

My son Samuel and my daughter Lizzy and my son Nicholas and my son Lockton have all discovered music. They beg me for a new piano, new Irish flutes, and they get geared up in their colonial clothes to join the orchestra downstairs. My daughter Mallory labors to bring you new issues of old news, and she is going to be marrying a man who loves history and drama and music.

My wife teaches Gabriel how to do his fractions, and listens to him read, and she stops to rub my neck as I write the farm journal.

How does one man ever deserve such heaven?

Sometimes paradise, sometimes the dream, is a waking affair.

I stand all amazed.

Let's Just See Already..and Operation Kill Market Garden

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:50:00 EDT

This is a post for the video-technoids among ye. We're post-producing our Farm Television pilot--Courage, New Hampshire--and we're trying to settle on a "look" for the interior shots. This sequence had very little light on the original shoot (our first mistake), and our efforts to bring up the light and the contrast digitally resulted in a deep reddish cast, brought on by the burnt-cherry stain of the public house walls. Premiere CS3 gives you dozens of color correcting tools, each with dozens of controls like "input black level," "hue correction," "saturation," "pedestal," "gain", "gamma" and more. (Those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.) If you add too many of them, or dial the controls too far, the results can be very grainy, and sometimes you don't even see that blow-out until you play it out on a big screen TV. Anyway, here's a little measure of modern color-correction option shock:

Jeff came up with a version of the last one that looks really nice even on big screen TVs. (This process is something like a family sitting around a TV and arguing over the controls. "Too yellow!" "Too red! Too blue!") I think we have it now--at least for that scene.

Kill Market Garden Update

My rant last night on H.R. 875--a bill that would require all market-bound small farmers and back yard gardeners to register with the federal government, and endure inspections--got me stewing about the very venal realities involved: it's absolutely essential to remember that most of our policy making has nothing whatsoever to do with safety or the public good. Sure, it's always sold that way. They call this stuff things like "The Produce Safety Act" or "The Healthy Families Act" or the "Safe Streets Act," and there may be a few policy wonks and legislators (the ones who have never run a business) who actually think they are doing good in the world, but what they are really doing is: 1) creating a procedural burden that ends up criminalizing small time family business 2) protecting inefficient, leviathan semi-monopolies who can afford lobbyists and compliance staff and 3) making us all poorer for spending more time filling out forms and less time producing a product.

The best politician, in other words, is the guy who says: "I'm not going to do anything good for you. I'm not going to sponsor any legislation--unless it's a bill to roll back the last fifty years of do-good idiocy. Got that?"

A guy can dream anyway..

HR 875 -- Operation Garden Kill

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 01:44:00 EDT

Picture a guy named "Skip" out on the golf course. He's a tired looking corporate executive. The guy next to him is a congressman. He looks tired too. He carries around the weight of an old family surname -- Sandborne. That's not his only problem. He's facing an election against someone who has a reputation of telling it like it is. He's going to need a very hefty campaign war chest to make his own brand of falsehood seem something like the truth.

At the end of the last hole, Skip says: "I need a favor."

Sandborne: "Shoot."

"We sell more grain and produce than anybody in America."

"Right," Sandborne says.

"We're getting tired of doing it the honest way. These farmers markets are picking up steam around the country and we want them snuffed. Terminated. Diced and juiced with extreme prejudice. You understand?"

"How we gonna do that?"

"Make them apply for a federal permit and an inspection."

"C'mon now, Skip. They ain't ever gonna do that."

"Regulate Organic completely out of existence."

"Organic? Skip. My niece is like an organic nut."

"Who butters your bread, Sandy baby?"

"Dont' get touchy. I'm just sayin--"

"I don't care what you're saying. I want these backyard tomato turks shut down before they grab share. What's good for Ag-Dax is good for Sandborne Paxton of the seventh congressional. You get me?"

Of course it doesn't happen that way in practice. Now we have congress people who are very much in touch with their feminine side, and you don't really have to use bald force anymore because the policy people don't think. A corporate goon from a huge agricultural conglomerate can call it something like the "Food Safety Act," and everybody gets weepy-eyed about protecting the public.

Believe it or not, there is a bill being considered in Congress that would make it very difficult for any small farm to take their produce to market. Here on Riley's Farm, our ox is not being gored. We sell everything we grow right here, but agriculture is good for communities and anyone who wants to throttle it--on behalf of corporate oligarchies-- doesn't really have the best interest of America at heart.

The bill should be killed--and anyone who even considers it, sponsors it, or gives it more than 30 seconds worth of thought should be remembered as the treasonous, anti-American scum they have so manifestly proven themselves to be.

..and that's my measured opinion.

A Little Beef

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:44:00 EDT

Saturday morning I went out to see some miniature Angus and Hereford cattle in a place called West Cajon Valley, on the road to Victorville. The nice people at Crossroads Ranch, run by the Coleman family, let me see, first hand, how docile and small these breeds really are. Their website--small world--was designed by Courtney Creighton, the older brother of farm dance-master and all around living historian, Logan Creighton.

I've never really done a spreadsheet on building a herd of cattle, miniature or otherwise, but I'm beginning to think a mini-herd would be worth considering. If there were a way to make sure the beef got a USDA inspection, I think our farm guests would enjoy corn-fed, Iowa style beef. (For a brief time, in another world, I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writers workshop, and I still remember the way Iowa beef and pork sizzled its way, with coffee, across the Hamburg Inn.) If you've been watching the financial news (don't!), Jim Rogers says he is buying up farms. Wouldn't it be ironic if all these agritourism operations started "beefing up" their production operations again? And..if every front and back lawn in the Inland Empire were turned into a vegetable garden, I wonder if we could grow enough food to keep the southland from turning into a Mad Max movie. (Someone else do the spreadsheet on this; I'm tired of graphing commerce this morning, and I don't know how much backyard barley you have to grow to keep the squad cars in reasonably good repair.)

On the beef herd front, Scott says a friend of his is weighing the merits of staying a hobby rancher, or getting into real ranching. I think he has about 30 head of cattle--and that doesn't seem "hobby" to me, but industrial scale is the enemy of most small projects. When you're up against Con-Agra and AMD, you really have to have a pretty good "boutique beef" operation to encourage people pay a premium rate for the extra value. I think the spreadsheet might be different, however, in a restaurant operation, because that premium is more easily blurred into the extra value of the served-food price. (Incidentally, I just finished a turkey sausage sandwich. Incredible. You point-counters would do well to consider the lowly turkey sausage.)

What I really like, however, about a cattle operation is that it is deeply American--and very deeply Oak Glen. These apple farms are called "ranches" because most of the old time farmers ran cattle to make up for bad crop years. I have no problem with someone who wants to survive on carrots and tofu, but you tell me Americans don't deserve a hamburger if they want one--and you have a fight on your hands.

Searching for Courage

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 04:08:00 EDT

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 10:26:00 EDT

Generally, I think it's a good idea not to read too much in the way of financial news these days. If everyone in America spent more time selling and less time fretting, we could probably work our way out of this financial mess. I learned this here on the farm over the past few weeks; this market is something like selling peanuts at a baseball game where everyone in the stadium is fixated by the sight of two airplanes appearing to collide in the distant sky. Most of the stadium-hawkers are looking up at the spectacle, but a few keep pitching , and they find out most of the crowd is still hungry.

Nevertheless, completely avoiding what qualifies as "news of the century" is something like jumping in a sail boat without pondering the clouds on the horizon. CNBC put together a nice little slide show of "famous last words." It underscores a point I find fascinating: not even the people who claim to know what they are doing, know what they are doing. Why do I find that intriguing? Well, economics, really, is the study of sentient, communicative human beings attending to their rational self-interest. It's the study, in other words, of populations making financial decisions. The mal-functioning sub-structures of a kidney cell can't look up to the scientist peering through the electron microscope and scream: "heah, we're experiencing some surface membrane polarity down here brought on by ATP depletion!"

People, on the other hand, can talk. They buy. They sell. They balance check books, apply for unemployment, purchase insurance, deliberate over car warranties. They answer surveys. They make their financial decisions known by where they sign their names and when they pay their bills. They decide that a doctor's services are worth $300,000 a year and a file clerk's are worth $22,000. The stock market mirrors, over time, the collective sense of what everything is worth. I say, "over time," because this morning's good news can make something really worthless seem really valuable, and "over time," the market comes to know the broad, long-term truths. We've got LOTS of data on what people do financially and--unlike basolateral membrane domains--they can tell us why they do it.

So why can't we study the global financial system with the same accuracy a microbiologist studies proximal tubular cells?

Because people lie. We are gross, calculating, depraved sinners who--without fear of God--are willing to put any face necessary on the story of our financial affairs so as to maximize our take. Of course the lies can be as simple as embellishing the language on a resume or as baroque as conducting a mega-billion dollar swindle, but a failure to be honest about our intentions, and our actions, is at the root of what makes economics so inscrutable. If Kidney cells could lie, we might never have invented the dialysis machine.

The temptation, on the policy level, is to assume that only people directly involved in commerce are the potential liars, but ponder the Madoff mess: Madoff is accused of lying, but so are the regulators themselves; if you take taxpayer money to regulate the securities market, and you don't do your job, you're telling your employer one thing and doing another. If Congress complains about CEO salaries and hides their own automatic pay increases, and travel benefits, how can anyone really trust the dialogue going on between deceptive businessmen and deceptive politicians?

We keep talking about spending more money to "stimulate" the economy, but what we really need is a hell fire and damnation pastor scolding us, collectively and individually, for our sins.

Can you imagine what we could do, as a people, if we realized how much we need God?

Anniversaries

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:25:00 EDT

I wasn't going to mention the Boston Massacre, but this morning a "history site" gave Elvis Presley milestones higher billing than the Boston Massacre, so I'm reminding all of you Americans, out of protest, that this was the day, 239 years ago, when the city fathers of Boston were proven sadly right in their objection to standing armies in a time of peace. It has become common place to misconstrue John Adam's defense of the British soldiers, in court, as a sign that this affair was not really an atrocity, but the patriots who gave the annual Boston Massacre oration, for years afterwards, didn't' take that view--and they were the ones who had to live under military occupation. Here is the way the event was reported in New Hampshire in the March 9th, 1770 edition of the Gazette.

P O R T S M O U T H. March 9, 1770. Bloody Work in Boston. By a Person from Boston since the Post, we hear, that about Eight O'Clock last Monday Evening there happened another Difference with the Inhabitants of that Town and some Soldiers of the 29th Regiment, in which both Sides received several Blows, and would have been very fatal, if Mr. Maul, an Officer, had not obliged the Soldiers to retire to their barracks, the Inhabitants gathering very thick in King-Street, the commanding officer of the main guard ordered a File of Men to draw up before the Custom-House, and whether any Words passed between him and the People is not certainly known, but he gave Orders to the Men to fire upon the People, which immediately killed three on the Spot, and wounded four others extremely bad, one of which was dying when our Informer left the Town....we impatiently wait to hear the Result relating to this horrid Affair, as from the Temper of the People something too serious would take Place.

The reality, as the founders knew, is that placing soldiers among a people who valued their charter rights, and their institutions of representative government, is a disservice to both the soldiers and the citizens. A professional army is a clumsy vehicle for enforcing the peace. There were routine fights between two different sets of authority in the town--the night watchmen and patrolling bands of sometimes drunken British soldiers. Soldiers and citizens fought for part time work. Church meetings were interrupted by the fifes and drums of British troops--who didn't like the politics of the pulpit. Finally, no deliberative body is free to engage in free expression with gun barrels pointing at the meeting hall.

The massacre was, indeed, a massacre, but not because every British soldier was a brute. The arrogant ministers of King George had sent them on a mission no fighting man could honorably fulfill--that of making tyranny "peaceful" and "orderly."

The "Near" St. Patrick's Day Ball

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:34:00 EDT

The band is rehearsing brand new (but very old) numbers for our celebration of the "Near" St. Patrick's Day Ball at the Old Packing Shed. (St. Patrick's Day falls on the 17th, a Tuesday, but we're not brave enough to try to get you up here into Oak Glen on a Tuesday night.) This way you can have a family night honoring the great Irish saint, and then celebrate with your office buddies Tuesday night as well. We're just doing our part to increase the sum total of celebration, you might say.

Bea and Jim Romano and their group of Celtic Musicians will join our own Kathy von Arx, Freeman House, David Thomas, and Angela Shaddix for great music, Irish cheer, and an excellent feast provided by the Irish-for-a-night Packing Shed cooking crew.

After you've celebrated the Irish-American tradition, on March 21st, you can celebrate the Scottish-American freedom fighters who constituted the heritage of one of America's clear thinkers: Patrick Henry.

An Evening in the Colonies with Patrick Henry is held at the Hawk's Head Public House and features great food and immortal political rhetoric: give me liberty, or give me death!

Let no one say there's nothing to do in the country this month!

..So Start clicking!

Camp Revolution 2009

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:42:00 EDT

Brandon Ryder and Jeff Hammond are putting the finishing touches on this summer's Camp Revolution Itinerary, but you can sign up and pay for the camp now. A Family of four (2 adults & 2 kids) gets a bargain, local living history camping vacation, with all meals provided, and period clothing (rented) for less than $3600. I don't want to tell you what I spent to fly the family to Williamsburg a few years ago, but let's just say it cost a great deal more than Camp Revolution--and although there's nothing like visiting the shrines of freedom in person, this vacation will be a lot closer to living in the 18th century than you can find at most history vacation destinations. There are group and big family discounts too, so call Jan for details. (909-797-7534 ext. 201)

Up Early, Thinking About the War...

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:10:00 EDT


"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

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:40:00 EDT

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

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 14:45:00 EDT

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

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 20:20:00 EDT

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

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 14:08:00 EDT

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 us Hope 'Ideology' Keeps Getting in the Way

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 13:39:00 EDT

"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 Changling as Bible College

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:24:00 EDT

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

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:12:00 EDT

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

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:30:00 EDT

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

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:17:00 EDT

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

Fri, 13 Feb 2009 13:40:00 EDT

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

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:23:00 EDT

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

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 13:56:00 EDT

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

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:16:00 EDT

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

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:15:00 EDT

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.

Americans--get out of your comfortable

Shooting from the Woods

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 10:53:00 EDT

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

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 03:54:00 EDT

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..

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 13:32:00 EDT

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.

The Humanist Exposed

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:57:00 EDT

I share a Netflix account with my boys and Samuel has a sneaky way of moving his movies to the top of the que, so when I saw the email message "We have recieved..." I panicked and took the first recommendation I could find. The result was this AMC production called "Mad Men," which, as the show tells us on screen 1, is a term coined by Madison Avenue Advertising executives to describe themselves.

Although the production standards, and the writing, are quite simply beyond belief, I don't recommend this show for families. The world view is vile. The morality is beyond contempt. It doesn't appear to descend to the Sopranos brand of epidermis and blood, but it's no less evil in its own way.

The odd thing is that it makes an argument for God without appearing to know it--at least if the first three episodes are any guide.

Normally I absolutely cannot stand story lines which depend on a shared presumption about our collective take on cultural and political events. When "Mr. Holland's Opus" urged me to get weepy about John Lennon's death, I thought, "oh, please, why ruin a perfectly good story by hitching it to a pop icon?" Nabakov called this sort of thing "topical trash," and it's an easy trap. On one level, it's as simple as telling an old joke instead of a new one. Story-tellers have an urge to use known material, but however much we want to succeed as raconteurs, we can't do it by using old material. It always has to be, on some level, new.

Mad Men does have a topical angle--the response of the advertising world to the nation's realization that smoking tobacco could be dangerous to your health, but it makes the dilemma real by creating a credible character--(M)ad Man Don Draper--who has to figure out how to keep selling cigarettes to a world that knows better.

Don's real problem, however, is more sinister, and more revealing of the humanist's blind, arrogant, and ultimately childish rage.

Don senses there is something false about a 1960s American gentry that appears to worship suburban homes and suburban routines. The occasion of a neighborhood party has Don drinking beer all morning as he builds a playhouse for his daughter's birthday. The divorcee invited to the celebration is made to appear more "centered" than the married housewives gossiping about her inside the kitchen. Don, a shameless lothario, is made to appear more wise even though, and perhaps because, he doesn't believe in anything.

The reality here, of course, is that the very blessings God doles out, across generations, to those who believe in His word can be the very source of the soul-sickness thinking people sometimes feel when they sense the white picket fence isn't worth worshipping. The God who made the white picket fence is worth adoration, not the other way around. When suburban respectability becomes worshipped for its own sake, it becomes both a farce to the moral degenerates who ridicule it, and to the unthinking traditionalists who live it out of form's sake. I've always cringed when people make fun of the "Ozzy and Harriet mentality." I like Ozzy and Harriet. I wish there were more Ozzy and Harriets around today. The world would be more civil. I do think, however, that Ozzy and Harriet would have had greater dimension, and a more certain defense against the reviling of Hollywood low-lifes and tenured cynics, if we had come to understood the Nelsons' spiritual world-view. Ozzy spent a great deal of time giving basketball advice, and making fun of himself, but I can't recall him ever praying. The root of their family's basic decency was never explored. God was the silent, and un-credited, accomplice.

The Bible-illiterate, the latch-key child of Western Civilization is represented well in Mad Men's Don Draper. He doesn't like the rules, and so he breaks them, but when he sees his children, asleep in their beds at night, there is something about home, hearth, wife, and child that provides him peace in a way he can't understand, because he spends so much time ridiculing the world's rituals, he doesn't have any time to look up towards the heavens.

It is Finished! (Well, sorta...)

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:20:00 EDT

Even Grandma Riley has watched a sneak preview of "Courage, New Hampshire." It's actually rough cut right down to the final scene, and it looks pretty good in my over-exposed way of thinking about these things. This editing process has re-affirmed a new lesson over and over again. Yes, I hate Hollywood. You can certainly deposit a great deal of our society's cynicism right at its doorstep, but I do have to give credit to the art directors. When you watch a major motion picture, in one sense you're seeing a rolling montage of stunning post-cards. Every frame of the movie has that lush, complex simplicity of a dramatic photograph. Think of the backgrounds in the hobbit's lair in "Lord of the Rings" or the flock of sheep grazing on the English country estates in "The Duchess." Sometimes, the beauty of the images hold you, even when the dialogue is just unloading freight and moving the story from here to there.

Of course, art direction is just one of the many hats a film wears. I have new respect for sound men, lighting crews, hair-dressers and casting directors. The question before the story-telling world, as I see it, is whether the new technology will make it possible to break the hide-bound largesse of the average film production. I believe even small film these days is defined as something that costs less than $3 million. Could a dramatic TV show, worth watching, be made for $50,000 an episode?

Dunno. I guess we'll find out. Years ago, the "desktop publishing" promise seemed to hold that everyone would be able to publish their own books and newspapers--and of course they can, but much of it isn't worth reading. John Updike correctly predicted that the "information highway" would be mostly roadkill. Quite a bit of YouTube, and even Cable television, bears this out. In an age where literally anyone can create their own daily news show, the world is still subscribing to the shrill preening of Keith Olberman and the school girl posturing of Rachel Maddow. Why? Because it's slick. There's good theme music, studio lighting, writing-teams, and the weight of network legitimacy behind it. The key will be mastering budget-lean versions of those production assets if we are really to see a content-rich transformation of programming. Certainly, there are departments (lighting & sound) that can't really be cut, but years ago I was watching a commercial film shoot here on the farm. There was a dolly-grip assigned for the day, with no dolly-shots planned, and no dolly on site. In some European countries, you have to hire a native cinematographer, even if you don't use him, to please the unions. (People wonder why we're having a global economic crisis?)

Most industries that become wildly profitable during the firsts, second, and third generations wind up accumulating fat. The American auto, steel, and film industry come to mind. Whole systems will need to be re-thought in order to keep making products that really meet human needs, without making consumers pay a ransom for jobs that are no longer (and perhaps never were) required. I hope the starry-eyed kids in the Obama Administration learn that lesson: it's not about protecting "jobs."

It's about making something worthwhile. Our economy, and our story-telling, will recover when we start thinking more about serving the needs of the market, and less about protecting our careers.

At the Movies, Over and Over and Over Again

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 13:12:00 EDT

We have been making steady progress on our pilot television/film festival version of life on the New Hampshire colonial frontier. We have a few final scenes to edit, a fair amount of color-balancing and sound work, and then a few transitions to engineer. I mean to make a systematic study of the "flash-back," since I haven't settled on any match of color and/or sound filtering that give it a fresh look. Even flashbacks inside a historical film still have to flash "back" somehow. We also need music, and we need some way of making up for something I didn't learn on the set. Movies need to give a character a chance to just look out across the valley and think. You need to show the militia captain polishing his musket and saying nothing. This movie has a lot of talkers. We need to show them working up to their speeches, so to, er, "speak."

I can say there is some genuinely good entertainment, and education, throughout, and I remain excited about where we might sell this. It has an adventurous, frolicsome, and yet dramatic and redeeming tone, which is more or less the target at which I was aiming.

I have come to realize that the way we watch movies is very dependent on the way in which we've been conditioned to watch movies. MTV changed our expectations abut the number of cuts-per-minute. The steady-cam made it possible to walk and talk with the characters, so we expect a camera that can glide in and out of a crowd, taking in everything the character sees. Stanley Kubrick, when he made Barry Lyndon, forever changed what we hope to see in the way of period lighting. If you watch old Hollywood epics, the 18th century is brightly, lavishly lit up like a car-dealership showroom. And even though we rarely have this perspective in life, for some reason we even want to see the top-down God-view of the action, with a camera pointing straight down from the sky by way of establishing shot.

Without having a Hollywood budget, we acknowledged some of this, but we didn't dumb down the story either. We use period language, and we focus on period realities. We hope teenage boys and girls watch this, but it wasn't made for them either. Frankly, I worry that the story's straight-forwardness, and its more or less transparent moral contours will violate another assumption we have about watching film: cynicism and nihilism snuck into our movie-going experience along with the steady-cam and the three-cut-per-second edit. We have a generation idolizing a Johnny Depp femme-pirate, instead of the royal navy that is purposely made to fail in his capture. Audiences don't expect any clear virtue anymore. Even a film I enjoyed very much--The Patriot--began with a war hero's tortured memory of his combat experience. Try as I might, I have yet to read any 18th century warrior regret at anything other than cowardice. Valor was coveted, not shamed, and the urge to disbelieve-at-any-cost would be more symptomatic of a post-Sartre film-grunt than a South Carolina militia colonel.

The American heart, and spirit, is bruised. That might explain why we fall for political snake oil so easily--and why we expect less from the characters on the big and the small screen.

Weather-Watching &Prayer as Musical Theater

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 13:19:00 EDT

I get up early on potentially rainy days to keep the web site updated, and this means trying to watch the storm from the various doppler sites on the internet. This system looks like most of the moisture is heading to the west of us, along the coast, in a more or less straight, south-to-north line. We'll probably have light misty rain most of the day, since the weather alerts don't include any flood watches or warnings. That seems to be a downgraded report from yesterday.

Climate change groupies like to remind us there is a difference between weather and climate, but it still stands to reason that if short term weather is difficult to predict, long term climate would be even more difficult to model. Columnist John Tomlinson reminds us that it might be time to start praying for global warming, since the earth has been cooling down, in reality, since 1998. From his column:

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?" I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right. The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels. Read more...

Will this put an end to the forlorn, money-raising images of mama polar bears leaving their cubs stranded on melting bergs? Probably not--even though the polar bear population is on the increase. New religions like climate-change inspire Inquisitorial zeal, especially when you get to wrap up class warfare along with a little old fashioned earth-worship. I'm a person of faith myself, but mine is rooted in the ancient texts, boasts George Frideric Handel, gothic cathedrals, nation-building, civil liberties, and eternal life to boot. Climate change, as a religious choice, is just...tacky.

Prayer without Specificity

..is something like a diet without a menu.

In times of crisis, even the atheists know that Americans are going to pray, and there is precious little they can do about it. Barack Obama pulled an absolute master-stroke in asking Rick Warren, the mega-church marketing genius to offer up an inaugural prayer, and Rick's invocation was a marvel of focus-group mastery. Rick's prayer offered up something for everybody. It mentioned Jesus for the evangelicals, Isa for the Muslims, and Dr. King for the civil rights crowd. It held up the Obama family for divine guidance and protection, pleasing the left-center faithful. It mentioned the planet for globalists, the earth for environmentalists, scripture for traditionalists, and even civility for the bi-partisan. It even intimated "accountability" before God for, well, everybody, because Rick never mentioned any of the sins we might be accountable for, except for the naughty practice of "fighting with each other." It was a prayer that looked out to America and said, "heah, kids, let's all show good sportsmanship and play ball!"

Here's the problem. We're not talking about a baseball game, and, even if we were, at least a coach would have something specific to say about where we were weak on the field. You might argue, "heah, lighten up, it's a chance for everyone to feel good about each other and the moment."

Okay, let's just go with that for a minute. Pastors, under this model, "make us feel good about ourselves"--happy, magnanimous, bi-partisan. They spray jolly-juice on the audience. Everyone walks back out to the parking lot, humming "Hello, Dolly, well Hello Dolly," and you leave the church occasion (or the state-church occasion) with a joyous, musical theater glow. I'll be the first to admit that I appreciate this sort of "can-you-feel-the-love" moment, where everyone gets weepy and forgiving and charitable en masse. I would even argue, it's absolutely necessary to keep everyone feeling some semblance of national identity, but at some point, someone has to play the grown-up. After the last chorus of "luck be a lady tonight," someone has to address the national moral failings that have brought us to our present crisis.

Theoretically, that's the pastor, the guardian of the ancient texts, the guy who actually purports to be familiar with the writings of Moses, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul.

Let me illustrate this by descending into absurdity. If you went to a car mechanic with bad brakes, would you expect him to consult the manuals and fix the car--or would you expect him to sing a few tunes from A Chorus Line and tell you not to sweat it?

America may be on the verge of a regulatory binge and a federal make-work spending spree to solve national problems that really have more to do with our souls than they do our infrastructure. Is it any wonder that millions of children are womb-killed in America, when corporate executives care more for their bonus pay than they do the good of the company? Is it any wonder that we have regulators who can't find a $50 billion fraud, when we take "thou shalt not steal" off the court room walls? Is it any wonder we're becoming lazy when newbie Christians can quote "judge not," but appear puzzled by "if your brother sins, rebuke him?"

Rick Warren made a sly bow to these realities, when he prayed "..all nations and all people will stand accountable before [God].." but he left the definition of that accountability up to the audience. This is something like a football coach telling martians they need to make touchdowns without even showing them what the ball looks like, much less the rules of the game. Pastors are supposed to teach, to encourage, and to rebuke.

You've got the "encourage" part down, Rick. You need to start rebuking and teaching now.

Chop, Chop

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:26:00 EDT

In the digital age, you can cut a movie, send it to your friends, endure a little electronic work-shopping, and get back at post-production--all without setting up a projector in a screening room at MGM, without, in fact, even sitting up out of your tilt-back office chair in remote Oak Glen.

That's pretty much what I'm doing these days--making a movie, or a television pilot. (There's a thin line between the two.) To me, it looks bully good--even after hearing the same dialogue over and over and over again. Parts of it still make me laugh out loud. One part got me weeping, but if you know me, that's pretty easy to do. (The same scene got Mallory crying, and that's not quite as easy to achieve.)

I've learned a few things: never cut a scene so that a character laughs at his, or anyone else's, funny line. If you let a character laugh, on screen, that cues the audience to laugh, and it's not really honest. I know that sit-coms depend on a laugh track, but that's something like taking aspirin when you don't really need it. It mutes the senses. To be honest, I violated this rule a few times, but only when the available material demanded it. I still have one painfully long, five minute talk-talk-talk scene in the dreary cavern cage, which is very authentic looking but still in need of art direction (lesson #2). I have to figure some way of chopping it, but the rest of the production--if you're even remotely curious--looks like it has at least as much potential as the standard network pilot-season mock-up. (lesson #3: never compare yourself to Hollywood; the big studios have enough money to put out some really boring stuff and still sell it: if you want to make it as an independent, it's got to be so great no one would dare reject it.)

Lesson #4: the exterior world, even in the country, is not quiet. It's full of wind, airplanes overhead, screaming u-pickers, and delivery trucks on the highway. Just film it and do the dialogue later. Hollywood calls this ADR (automated dialogue replacement) or looping. The actor comes back into the studio and re-speaks his lines, a phrase at a time, until they match the original production. They say Marlon Brando preferred looping, and would even mumble during the original shoot, so that he would get a chance to perfect his performance voice later. When you're filming out in the hot sun, waiting for a plane to pass by, you can understand its merits.

Lesson #5: telling a story is its own best reward. Take up the fiddle. Learn the piano. Memorize a few lines of Byron. Sing your own song. Otherwise, you'll just be out in the cold, in a crowd somewhere, buying political souvenirs, and hoping for a glimpse of the latest false-prophet.

And that is just too depressing to contemplate.

Cult-Like Devotion...

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:24:00 EDT

True religion, in one sense, has never really been "respectable." If twelve or thirteen men, with no visible means of subsistence, followed by thousands of hungry followers, took up residence in your community center, or in your church courtyard, or in the hills just outside of town, some people would be tempted to call code enforcement. If their leader was in the habit of calling the town's pastors and spiritual leaders, "vipers" and "hypocrites," others would conclude they were all heretics and renegades. If they all shared each others burdens and took care of each other, they would be labeled, very quickly, a "cult."

To be certain, there are dangerous cults in the history of the world, or else the accusation wouldn't have any sting. The word "extremist" is used the same way, not because it necessarily applies, but because it has a way of ending the conversation. People worship the middle. The cows like to make sure they are at the center of the herd, even if the herd is walking right into the slaughter house.

Martin Luther King, in his letter from the Birmingham Jail wrote these lines, about the modern American church:

"If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust."

King was lamenting the failure of the established church to be confrontational in the face of evil. After all, if a black Christian woman couldn't sit next to her white Christian sister on the same bus, wouldn't we expect the church to speak up? The Bible tells us in Amos 5:15, "Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate.." Dr. King specifically applauded the evil-hating, confrontational spirit of the early church, whose followers, according to King, "brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide..." (DNC, are you listening?)

Well that same modern church--the one King lamented--has indeed become "an irrelevant social club," because "confrontational" pastors are few and far between. We don't "hate" evil anymore, because hate--no matter how well directed--is too alarming for the cud-chewing middle. If a church speaks the truth, if it takes care of its flock, if it reads scripture as honestly as it can, if it preaches against sin among the congregation and in public office, someone will be hell-bound, literally, to call it a cult, and the resulting emasculation of the church makes for a happy hour in hell. Nothing pleases evil more than a limp-wristed, consensus-seeking "man of God."

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was having some real trouble. He was literally asking friends for financial help. We both came to the same conclusion at the same time. I said, "wouldn't it be nice to be able to have nine or ten families gathered together in house churches across the land--real churches, that tithed to each other and preached the truth without bothering to build a seeker-friendly semi-fellowship of semi-Christians?"

"Amen," he said.

If you're tired of taking little dips into the pond of spiritual nothingness on Sundays, ponder this: House church, anyone?

A Sense of Urgency

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:11:00 EDT

Years ago, prior to my present incarnation as an 18th century farmer, I watched one of my colleagues (we'll call him "Chad") shut a computer system down in the middle of the day--to tinker with it. Upwards of 40 people in that office had very little to do while they waited, through lunch, and the next morning, as "Chad" doodled around with their system software. He even left early on the day in question, "to avoid traffic." I watched the business owner pacing and I looked on, helplessly, as Chad took personal calls, played with system settings, ordered lunch and appeared to give every indication that he didn't know what sort of havoc he was causing.

A few months later a supplier in that industry took me into his office, closed the door, and and tried to take a breath to control himself before blurting out a necessary truth about my colleague "Chad."

"Here's the problem," the man said, "that little snot has no sense of urgency."

Among the world's various kinds of villainy, a delayed sense of obligation can be the most irritating. It's not as though you are dealing with a profane crank or price gouger or an utter incompetent. They might even be pleasant. Heck, they are likely to be very pleasant people, because, frankly, nothing bothers them. The work always gets done. Someday. But the pain isn't just the procrastination with these sorts of people; it's the sense your very pressing problems, deadline problems, don't really matter to them. It's something like people who stop their car in the middle of a parking lot, blocking traffic, just to talk to friends. There's no real emergency for them, ever, and so if their own emergencies mean nothing to them, yours mean even less.

You can't imagine theses sorts of people ever looking in the rear view mirror. They wouldn't even look out the front window if there were a way to avoid it. They just don't care about anything but the turns and stops they need to make, when they need to make them, because the rest of the world--for them--just doesn't exist.

About the same time I was contending with "Chad," I heard a very, very prominent Southern California evangelical minister giving a sermon about a scratch he found on a brand new car. He was annoyed that he hadn't even owned the car for two hours without it being damaged, but then he remembered that, at the great and terrible day of the Lord, "it would all burn." He proceeded to tell the congregation that, essentially, nothing on earth mattered. "It will all burn." He proceeded to talk about the roof he worried about. "It will all burn," he said. The congregation laughed. He worried about his new lawn's watering system. "It will all burn," he said, "even the sprinklers." And everyone laughed.

Certainly, there is great virtue in calming down, and looking at the long-term, eternal picture, but there's a difference between doing that and checking out entirely. If the Lord gave a sermon, explaining the vast importance of the one lost sheep, it would seem weirdly disconnected to respond, "yeah, but it's all going to burn. Why even look for the sheep?"

I run into this phenomenon with phone companies a lot lately. The "business Sermons" I have to give them seem weirdly comical, and utterly obvious, but I might as well be preaching to a square block of pure rubber:

"Do you understand that we have no voice mail system?"
"Yes, I get that."
"And do you understand that we're in business? We actually advertise our phone number?"
"Yes. I understand."
"And do you understand that if we pay a lot of money to put a phone number up on a freeway billboard, it's a little weird having a voice mail system that doesn't work?"
"I understand."
"And do you understand that if we can't capture the customers' messages, we can't make sales?"
"I understand."
"And if we can't make sales, we can't pay you?"
"I understand."
"Really? So you don't mind fixing it right now--tonight?"
"Well..."

I've made this point before, but I'll make it again. The more America "checks out," the less care and love it shows the "here and now," the fewer talents we are going to have to show the Master upon His return.

A nd we won't be able to say "heah, it's all going to burn, right?"

Correspondence &Survival

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:59:00 EDT

Correspondence

First a few very generous letters of support & praise for our wonderful staff, then a little survival news:

Hi, I just wanted to send you a note and tell how much fun my son Johnny and I had on Friday. We always love coming to the farm on field trips. We did the "Gold Rush" for the first time. It was so great. Johnny loved listening to Logan play his jaw harp so much, he had to buy one. He hardly put it down all weekend. I also want to thank Angela, at the Inn, for her wonderful service. Johnny ordered a hot dog and wanted potato chips with it. When Angela found out they were all out she had them make up some special chip/fries just for him. He loved them so much he called the "Angela's Fries" and thinks you should put them on the menu. Always a delight,

-- Ilene and Johnny

Jim, Just a quick note of encouragement for all the wonderful new things happening at Riley's Farm! I so enjoy reading your journal - some days rather heavy and dark; others quite light and witty!! Never a dull page any way you look at it! Andy & I and our friends had a wonderful time at Christmas in the Colonies. We know several other couples who would love to attend, but because of the distance from their homes, they're not as inclined to participate - hopefully, that will change when there are overnight accommodations available - would be wonderful to continue in the Colonial mode into the next morning (not sure I could get Andy to wear a nightshirt and cap, though!) One of the couples at our table came from QUITE a distance - Pappy from Venice Beach and his lady-friend flew in from Sacramento to attend the evening! I'm SO bad with names, but the gentleman who served us was also one of the key players at the Girl Scout event that we held at the Farm last May. I couldn't believe that he recognized me and even remembered my name! He made the evening very special (As EVERY ONE of your staff does!) You can tell they really enjoy their work! The music ensemble was especially enjoyable - wish there had been a little longer time period for dancing - maybe without the very young ones, who were getting rather rambunctious! Andy & I also come up earlier in the year (Aug.) for the raspberry picking date night (to celebrate our anniversary). What a relaxing, enjoyable evening - the berry-picking gave us the opportunity to enjoy the silence together in the out-of-doors - just the sound of the breeze and the birds! Dinner was unhurried and DELICIOUS! Plan on doing it again this year! (And I've been telling LOTS of people about it, too). Wish I was available to attend the apple class next weekend - sounds like he's got some hints that would be right up our alley. Our couple of apple trees have been struggling for several years - we just aren't educated in the ways of growing them in the heat of SO. CAL. Anyway, keep up the good work - you've created a safe haven for families to learn about the real America! God bless you!

--Barbara

Our family enjoyed “Christmas in the Colonies” this year. It was our first dinner on the farm. I am excited about the future development of your “New England Village.” I was thinking you may want to incorporate a school house in the future. It would be a good experience for the children, of all ages, as it was in the days, to sit for 15 or 20 minutes with instruction from a teacher of the times. I am sure they would see and compare the change our country has gone through, good and bad. Thank you for making a difference. May God bless you and your family.

--Laura

Survival

If some of you think I talk about survival & the economy too much, just bear with me. Me dear old mother, Bea Riley, was a depression baby, and the images of a whole town full of men out of work spook me more now that I'm one of those grown men, providing for a family. As some of you know, I watch television one night a week, on Sunday, and I believe CNBC had a story on all the Florida socialites put out of the clover by Bernard Madoff. At one point, a Palm Beach pawn broker is interviewed, and he reported the trade in Rolex watches has never been more brisk--that he's never seen so many luxury items turned in for cash during his decades in the business.

"What do you think that means?" the reporter asked.
"Stock up on canned goods," the man replied.

Okay, okay, I know we're supposed to trust the learned heads--those wise men and women who provide counsel in economic matters, (the same ones who were outraged, a few years ago, anyone would criticize Sally Mae and Freddie Mac.) Seriously, if Leslie Stahl calls Barney Frank "one smart guy," who am I to question her judgment? Truly, if there is even a small chance that "tinkering" with the free market (trillion dollar, "classified" capital injections, bank bailouts, auto-company nationalization--you know--"tinkering.") If "tinkering" will work, and Dr. Bernanke really knows how to stave off a major depression without creating hyper-inflation, then I will be the first one to breath a sigh of relief.

It's easy to stand on the sidelines and rant. I genuinely do hope someone knows what they're doing. The trouble is that some very smart people disagree very mightily on the present economic crisis. Some say that government intervention actually extended and aggravated the great depression; others say we should have had more government involvement in the markets sooner. If we don't have any perspective on that crisis, after seventy years, I doubt we're going to have consensus on this crisis, as we endure it without the benefit of hindsight.

So far, here on the farm, our business is up. We may be benefitting from Southern Californians who don't want to travel as far for a day off in the country, but I think it behooves all Americans to begin having a "Plan B."

For those of you have thought about "Plan B," I probably don't need to remind you what happens when things break down, but I will anyway. One of our long time farm friends, Richard Hanna, told me a story about growing up in depression era Pennsylvania. Some days, he would literally go without food, and he would wait for the potato harvesting rigs to drive by in the fields, and then dig around for spuds that were thrown up and cut in half. These days, Americans don't go digging for root vegetables; they wait for FEMA to drop corn flakes from the sky. If FEMA does that, great, but what happens when FEMA runs out?

The "measured" version of a major economic crisis, the "best of the worst scenario" is that widespread economic deterioration leads to soup lines, massive unemployment, and homelessness. Not very fun, but not absolute stone-age chaos either. If greater Los Angeles could manage to keep the power lines charged and the water working, and central valley farms could still deliver food, it wouldn't be the high life, but there would be some form of order. Think, however, of what happened during the Rodney King riots. That "merely" represented outrage over a jury verdict. Imagine what happens when people are hungry. Or don't imagine it. At some point, order would be restored, but do you really want to be downtown, or even in the suburbs when there's a water or food shortage and the new order is being debated?

This is still very much "thinking out loud" material, but it seems to me one version of our long term capital program on the farm could include "survival limited partnerships." In the best case, we raise money to build a New England village, to build a place where Americans can learn from their past. In the worst case, the farm's overnight capacity becomes a survival escape for the investors who would rather have a bunk in the country, and a cow to milk, than a gangland group hug and a resource-sharing conversation with roving, urban youth.

I'll be the first to admit there is something outlandish about it, but the curse of reading history is the knowledge that the story of man is just chock full of the outlandish and the dramatic and the un-heard of and the un-expected. As the boys at Monty Python put it, "nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition." For some reason, our most cutting, dismissive satire is heaped on people who remind us of previous disaster. "Springtime for Hitler" in the musical The Producers reminds us that evil always has a touch of the ridiculous about it, and because evil is ridiculous, it's difficult to take seriously. No one really believes the messenger. Poor Peter Schiff, when he was predicting the real estate crash and the stock market crash was being laughed off the set by people like Ben Stein, and I suppose if I hint "survival shares" to our corporate attorney, I will get laughed out of the building, but....

Bea Riley, and that pawn broker in Florida, take the present economic crisis seriously. Should you?

Vain Repetitions

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:36:00 EDT

I believe it was C.S. Lewis who wrote, with respect to the supernatural, "seeing is not believing." As Dickens affirmed, when he fashioned the quivering, ghost-riddled Ebeneezer Scrooge, we are apt to chalk up what we can't explain to an "undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard.." We are more comfortable, generally, fitting the world into a pattern we find internally reasonable, no matter how much the perceived facts run contrary to our hypothesis.

Nowhere is this more apparent to me than in the way the modern church has adopted a pattern of accepted "Christianese," a set of vain repetitions to use in discussing our experience of God, and His Word.

Picture a men's prayer meeting. One man prays, "I just thank you, Lord, that I can let it all go on you, that I don't have to care about any of these problems, that YOU are my master, and YOU have taken care of everything and I just have to get out of the way, Lord."

And the group mumbles assent, and affirmation and amens.

.. churches would claim to follow God's word, but, in reality, they serve an approved extraction from the whole; they dish up a special denominational sauce that only mixes well with certain parts of the Word.

Then picture the next man praying, "..Lord, wicked men have opened their mouths against me...they repay me evil for good and hatred for my friendship... Lord, may their days be few, may their children be fatherless and their wives widows..may they be closed with disgrace..may their sins always be before the Lord, that He may cut off their memory.."

And the group pauses, chairs shift, and an awkward silence announces that this prayer doesn't fit somehow. It's not approved. Perhaps there is even a little awkward conversation afterwards. The second man is rebuked. He is just too angry. "God is about love," he is told, and "forgiveness."

The second man asserts, "I was just quoting the 109th Psalm."

"But we don't think you're interpreting it correctly," someone says.

"I wasn't interpreting it," the man says. "I was just quoting it."

Back to the prayer meeting:

First man: "I want to thank you Lord for taking away my desire for beer."

Second man: "I want to thank you Lord for giving us wine to make our hearts glad."

First man: "Thank you Lord for your kindness and mercy."

Second man: "..and Thank you, Lord, for your justice, for calling hypocrites 'vipers' and 'white washed tombs.'"

First man: ".. help me to understand and serve my wife..."

Second man: "..and, Lord, please encourage my wife to obey me..."

The point here is that most reasonably Biblical churches would claim to follow God's word, but, in reality, they serve an approved extraction from the whole; they dish up a special denominational sauce that only mixes well with certain parts of the Word. It's almost as if the Bibles of America have dim gray type indicating passages that are to be read but not pondered.

In John 12, we are told "...then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment..."

We read this passage, but we keep it at a safe distance--in the Holy Land, two thousand years away. Can you imagine a Baptist pastor having his shoes removed by a woman in the church, that she might anoint his feet with ointment, and wipe them with her hair?

It's a loving image, in the abstract, but in reality, if it were staged in a contemporary living room, it would seem beautiful to some, strange to others, and vaguely scandalous to quite a few. I think we understand much of the Word, refracted through a Victorian prism that falsely shades away an intimacy, and an honest affection, that is improperly called sin. In an age full of abortion, divorce, and sexual indiscretion of every sort, the faithful need to be on guard, but not to the point of preaching a false purity. We have heard tell of some Christian families who have decided their daughters will not even hold hands with the opposite sex until they are married. Not even hold hands.

I suppose my question would be: would washing the house guests' feet with their hair be allowed?

There is a real danger in creating our own gospel, in formulating a code of behavior that has no support in the Word, that strives to demonstrate a holiness that was never called for by God, and that--indeed--makes a mockery of true holiness.

It's difficult enough, in other words, to know and ponder and follow His law, without inventing crazy requirements of our own.

Approved Deceptions

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 15:12:00 EDT

So you walk into a movie theater and you pay $9.00 for the flick and then $9.50 for a medium bag of popcorn and a bottled water. One admission gets you all the rides in a theme park, but a very small tube of sunscreen is $9.95. The cable TV pitchman is willing to sell you the juicer-of-all-time in 3 easy payments of $29.95 a piece. You price merchandise in your own store, and no one will ever let you sell it for an even buck multiple. It's got to be $x.95 or $x.99.

Let's take the movie flick phenomenon. The conventional wisdom is that you have no where else to buy food--you are a captive--so you have to pay through the nose for snacks. Well, first of all, I tend to look at things from the perspective of the business owner. I respect profit--and I like seeing first run movies on the big screen. It's exciting. You catch up with old friends at the show. I do believe--despite my love/hate relationship with what Hollywood produces--that the big old 14 screen luxury theaters are a service to the community, but I'm curious as to why there has to be a pricing con game built into the system. I think it's because people just won't pay $14 for a movie and market rate for snacks. They will pay $9 for a movie and then grudgingly pay more for snacks than they would pay anywhere else. It might have something to with how much people will allow to slip out of their wallet at any one time, or it may be the leverage movie producers have over the theaters that screen them. Whatever the cause, payments over time are easier to swallow--even if that balloon payment is a doozey. That explains the $9.95 sunscreen and the "three easy payment" and the penny-off-the dollar pricing convention. When we buy things, there is a delicate line between feeling served, and feeling mugged.

The strange thing about life is that this systemic, approved dishonesty is built right into the fabric of our existence. Everyone knows--Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative--that the Social Security system is facing insolvency soon, that it is--in fact--a Ponzi scheme without enough new "investors" to satisfy the old ones. But there are so many retirees in this country who vote that no politician in his right mind would ever propose serious reform, if it involved sacrifice across the board. Two opposing ideas--"old people should be get what is coming to them" and "there isn't enough money"--just can't be reconciled. The reckoning is delayed, put on the installment plan, and the eventual disaster looms larger and larger. Politicians who actually want to solve the problem, like theater owners who want to make a profit, have to coax the electorate into giving them authority by pretending the price won't be very high.

Or take education: You are sitting in a class at the community college--taught by an utter buffoon whose principles you detest--but he has the power to certify you, flunk you, write recommendations, move you on or keep you back. Do you write papers which honestly state your claims or do you tow the party line and move on, fake your way into tenure, and eventually speak the hard truths after accepting so many falsehoods you don't know what you believe anymore?

And what about love? There's a field full of deception if ever there were one. You get the guy, ladies, by playing "hard to get." As my old daddy used to say "the boy chases the girl until she catches him." There's a part of our souls that wants what we can't have, so we have to pretend that we're unavailable to make certain our availability is achieved. Consider Genesis 24:

[Isaac] went out to the field one evening to meditate, and as he looked up, he saw camels approaching. Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, "Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?" "He is my master," the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself.

Rebecca's veil wasn't general--not a shield against every man--just the one she had agreed to marry. I imagine several thousand books have been written on the concept of the veiled, or the semi-veiled, female, but the reality is that we always value what we cover up and hide--whether it's the woman behind the dress or the secret that can't be shared or the birthday present that can't be opened yet, or the glowing joy of movie popcorn and compelling cinema, hidden behind the $7.00 matinee teaser price.

A few years ago, I was a real bear about charging for parking on busy fall harvest days. In my mind, it was an utterly reasonable charge. We have to keep the place safe; we have to keep the traffic moving, make sure an ambulance could have access in the event of an emergency; we also needed to save up for eventual hard surfacing of our roads and parking lots. It made sense to charge for parking, but lots of newcomers to the farm had no idea what they were getting. Why should they pay for parking in a farm field? We stopped charging for parking and our food business went way up. Conventional wisdom would indicate we charge more for food to make up for the parking loss, but the idea of a $12.95 hamburger turns my stomach. The $12.95 hamburger, in our case, pays for the guy who won't pay for parking, no matter how reasonable the charge, and the family that won't buy food from our restaurants--and who picnic on the farm, using our bathrooms and trash containers along the way. I think one of the reasons I hate price-gouging on food is that it seems to be a different version of what our federal and state government does: they penalize those who work, to pay extortion, and give make-work jobs, to those who won't.

But who, really, wants to be the picnic-Scrooge? Who wants to stand around and read farm journal entries to customers who don't--or won't--understand? If a theater owner wanted to give honest, market-priced snacks and have his customers pay $15 for the movie, would an empty parking lot console him for being truthful? Imagine if he stood out on the sidewalk and said, "look folks, it's Brad Pitt who charges $5 million an appearance, not the farmer who raised the pop-corn; we're just trying to be honest about what you're paying for." Would that work?

Probably not. I'm not a saint on this score, by the way. There's a part of me that would rather not know what it costs to take six children to a movie--with snacks.

"Please," my inner voice counsels. "Don't add it up. Just enjoy the show."

I'm still not going to charge $12.95 for a hamburger, but if you picnic on Riley's Farm, without buying anything else, I will throw in a farm journal entry, read out loud, absolutely free.

Farm Forecasting II

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:51:00 EDT


Jeff Hammond's first draft of our craft building design. These structures will house, in the "City on a Hill" a potter, a weaver, a woodwright, and a printer.

My recent out loud musings about our focus inspired these comments from Sharon of Victorville: "...Thank you for your true insight into the state of our nation, both morally and financially. If only the people who need to hear this could. I keep asking myself, where did all the intelligent, moral people in our government / country go?.."

Thanks, Sharon. I wonder too--and I'm even bipartisan about it. The other day I saw the press pictures of five past, present, or future presidents of the United States, and it looked to me more like a crime lineup than a gathering of the great.

I don't just blame this on the men in question, or even the people who elected them. I blame it on bad mythology, bad spirituality, and poor leadership in our churches. With respect to mythology, just consider our transition as Americans from the Horatio Alger novels ("Strive and Succeed" stories of poor boys who work hard to educate and improve themselves) to the "mind" of Stan Lee comic books and movies, about ordinary people who "mutate" into cob-web and fire-spitting freaks. On the spirituality front, we have gone from a nation who repents before prayer to a nation that prays without ever asking for forgiveness--a nation offended by the very notion of seeking forgiveness. On the church leadership front, even the most devoted of American church leaders have turned the church into a kind of drug and emotional recovery center. Jesus came to heal the sick, it is true, but not to chain them to their hospital beds.

When General Washington inspired his men to cross the Delaware and achieve a needed victory over the Hessians. he didn't get bitten, Stan Lee style, by a radioactive rodent and develop super-human scratching skills.

Where this leads me, with respect to our focus, is to remember that redemptive drama and mythology need to be part of everything we do here. It's not really enough just to buy raspberry preserves off the shelf. The story of how they got there is just as important, if not more so. I believe all of our staff, from farming to living history, need to be willing to tell the story of how the harvest came about, and how America came about. It wasn't by accident. It wasn't by mutation. It wasn't by entitlement either.

When General Washington inspired his men to cross the Delaware and achieve a needed victory over the Hessians. he didn't get bitten, Stan Lee style, by a radioactive rodent and develop super-human scratching skills. There is a cancer growing on the American soul when we shift from a generation of boy scouts seeking to "be prepared" over to a gaggle of creepy boy-warlocks, hoping to be Harry Potter. The story of America is really much more about Horatio Alger than it is about Peter Parker. That may sound like an outlandish comparison, but it sums up the primary differences between America's foundational principles and our present sickness: we were once willing to work for super-powers, now we want them spliced into our DNA by cosmic accident. We were once willing to help our own poor; now we want the Federal government to do it. We were once willing to pay for a doctor's visit; now we want free medicine to fall from the sky.

Of course that's only one of many principles that can come through in the human drama of living historians playing the part of the "former America." Another is simple virtue--politeness, a smile, encouragement, hospitality. When I was a graduate student at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, I stopped in at a university style shop to get my hair cut. The young woman who cut my hair was winsome, friendly, beautiful. I told a friend, afterwards, "heah, I think she likes me." My friend responded, "Be careful. You're in Iowa now. Everyone's friendly."

One of my proudest achievements, running Riley's Farm, has been the extraordinary level of genuinely demonstrated kindness shown by our staff towards the guests. I tell our people, "I don't want you to be 'corporate customer-friendly kind.' I want you to love our customers. They put the food on our table. While I can't say that we always live up to this virtue, the letter I received just the other day about Logan Creighton is a case in point:

I just wanted to let you know that my daughter, Tara and I came up from Redondo Beach, for a half day at Riley’s Farm on 12-31-08 and had a great time. We signed up for the archery, tomahawk throwing, apple pie baking, quill ink writing, and the music. There were only a few other couples on the farm that we saw and so we were not used to be one of the few. However, we were assigned with “Logan” (not sure if this is his real name) and found that he was so informative and passionate about what he was doing that we forgot we were the only ones around. We had a blast with all of the activities we did and although are last session was supposed to end by 4:00, I think we actually left close to 5:00. Everything we did, Logan was sure to give us the historical context surrounding the activity and had a wealth of information to impart to us. We’ve come to many events- the Civil and Revolutionary War events, Sleepy Hallow, Civil War Ball, and countless others but this was a new experience for us as we’ve never had such personal one on one at Riley’s. I just wanted you to know that you’ve got a wonderfully talented, personable, and historical asset with Logan and we so appreciated all of his talents and passions. Thanks for making this day a grand day indeed! We hope to see you real soon. My daughter keeps talking about our day at Riley’s.

We put a lot into our buildings, and the grounds, and I genuinely like the food in our restaurant better than all my favorite down-the-hill eateries,but it's the connection people make with other human souls that they remember. It's the drama, the smile, the laughter.

I believe that the experience will be more keen, and exciting, and educational, and memorable if we give the staff--on public days--a set of historical realities to solve, in front of, and with, the guests. Suppose a Quaker comes into town that morning and there's a bit of a theological tiff with the local Congregationalist. Imagine a peddler/ itinerant cobbler stumbles into town and a fight breaks out over who gets to entertain and feed him. (There is some basis for this; when news was slow, travelers were sometimes "fought" over.) Suppose the day begins with one of the local selectmen entering the public house, a little bruised and beaten from highwaymen outside of town. Perhaps the independent spirit of shared law enforcement could be demonstrated in the response of the staff, and the guests. (I know, I know; we can't hang anyone, but the drama of remembering swift, reasonable justice might be soul-satisfying in this era of the 10 year death penalty appeal.)

Ideally, the premise would come from an actual incident that was known well enough to have included a beginning, a middle, and an end--after the manner of good drama. The staff could be given motivation, and a few lines to remember throughout the day, and the guests could be given premise, and hints as how to help, but the final re-cap, and the lessons learned, would be hashed out at the 4:00 PM closing bell, with comparisons to the way the incident played out in history itself. We could have a slightly different drama every day.

What say ye?

Farm Forecasting, Your Thoughts

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:44:00 EDT

I'm thinking out loud today about the future of the farm. I do this quite a bit, but I'm actually hoping to benefit from the "multitude of counselors" that our guests represent. So, weigh in, by all means, if you have the inclination.

We're always pondering slogans around here because a slogan has the value of encouraging a fairly simple story, or "hook" that describes the place, and might even make it easy for a potential guest to sell the experience to his or her friends and family. Right now, we pitch "The Past is Just a Moment Away," but we've also used lines like "ninety minutes from Los Angeles and 200 years away" and "You're never too old to grow up in the past."

I know that Americans like to make fun of marketing, but I love it. Isn't there something cheery about the memory of all those Chevys lined up on the streets of Virginia City, near the Ponderosa, and someone singing "see the USA in your Chevrolet?" I think the reason we like advertising--when we like it--is that it makes us feel better about ourselves and our choices. If you consider the "I'm a PC" ads, those spots made Mac users or potential buyers, feel "hip", "sensible," "smart," "artistic," and perhaps even smug that, if nothing else, they weren't the fat, stodgy, backward PC types. Volvo ads make potential buyers feel not just like good parents, but the very best of parents. The Target Christmas ads made you feel like the proud parent of the most adorable child in the school play. (Somehow, they managed to do that and still make them feel as swanky as Beyoncé at the same time.)

A few months ago, I proposed an alteration of our theme, not "the past is a moment away," but "America is just a moment away."

No one seemed to get it on our staff. "What are you telling them? They don't live in America?"

Well, yes, in a way. No one lives in America anymore. We're losing more and more of the idea of America everyday. A friend sent me this youtube today--featuring a bunch of Palestinian zealots calling for Sharia, not in Paris, or London, but in our own Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. You could argue that America has always been about protest, and well it should be, but the range of ideas we're being asked to assimilate is not just diverse anymore; it's violently contradictory. You can't enjoy both political liberty and Islamo-Stalinism at the same time. You can't guarantee 0% unemployment and still enjoy the wealth created by the free market at the same time. Freedom brings with it some pain, but less pain than totalitarianism, and, as that great American, Ben Franklin put it, "you can't have gain without pain." You can't put a totalitarian murderer like Che Guevara on teenage sweatshirts and then expect them to encourage each other to good, thinking citizenship. You can't have Southern California high school kids hoisting a Mexican flag over a public high school without having an honest conversation about what that means: do you want a culture that gives extraordinary freedom to all sorts of citizens of every conceivable race, creed, and religion--or do you want a bribe-poxed oligarchy and a government by drug-lords? You don't have to scan the financial news for very long to know that the old, Judeo-Christian notions of fair play, integrity, and a balanced scale are not in vogue among either the management or labor or governing class in America. Indeed, when a "respected" business titan like Warren Buffett waxes passionate about the "good work" of Planned Parenthood and the need for higher property taxes, we are in trouble. America may not yet have lost its moral and intellectual compass, but the spindle is certainly bent.

How does this relate to the farm? My sense is that Americans want to be able to sing Christmas Carols--without apology. They want to be able to celebrate a devotion to political and economic liberty--without apology. They want a place where a little boy can buy a sling-shot and a girl a prairie dress, without some hairy feminist lamenting gender roles. They want to see where the food is grown and the value of the work it takes to grow it. They want music that has stood the test of time. They want to explore the unifying ideas that have sustained America--and not the divided petty interests that are beginning to destroy us.

Why does that image of that steeple in the montage above stir us? Why do we pause when we see the sight of a New England church, pristine and bright among the deepening Maple trees?

The mere building, to be certain, is little more than a memory of what it once represented. It was once "the meeting house" for a people who came to America, in the very first instance, to build a "city upon a hill." Certainly, America has never been a theocracy. Heaven forbid we should be ruled by a Rick Warren or a Jeremiah Wright, but America has always been morally informed by the Word. We protect the innocent, we seek justice for rich and poor equally, we help widows, we don't covet each others wealth, we have not (historically) had a culture of bribe and graft because we loved and feared a just and merciful God, and because we wrote His reality into our law. It was, moreover, not just on paper. It was a law "written on our hearts." This was not the law of Sharia, the merciless invention of a war-lord who converted at the tip of a spear, but a law that didn't require faith alone to prove its merits. For hundreds of years, the ten commandments produced order, liberty, peace, and wealth.

A friend of mine, who served in Vietnam, told me that his 1960s era officer's training course included the 10 Commandments. American officers may have not matched the ideal, but they were supposed to distinguish themselves by a Western standard. Ten years later, my 1970s high school psychology class was asking us who we would kill to eat in a lifeboat running out of rations.

If I had presence of mind, I would have said, "we kill no one. It is better that we all die than that any of us cheapen life."

But I didn't have that presence of mind, and our teacher, who should have been teaching virtue was a kindly dolt who didn't think about the consequences of her actions. We were all intimidated by a generation of teachers who were seeking the "Brave New" agnostic paradise fueled by a science that was 10% honest inquiry and 90% political agenda. (Any honest sociologist, for example, will tell you that a faith-based abstinence program, and a culture favoring youthful marriage and shaming promiscuity, will reduce SDTs faster than a semester of birth control classes.) Even today, a whole sorry strata of Americans find more soul-solace in worshipping that whore--Mother Earth--than they do in seeking our merciful and just father in heaven.

Well, we are beginning to pay the price for a generation of financial and political leaders who couldn't bring themselves to read the western canon, let alone the Bible. Ignoring his Word, and ignoring history, just isn't working in America. Depending on whom you believe, America may be in for a bit of a trial this year. Some money managers say "buy American stocks" now, because they will sky-rocket. Others--the ones who predicted the present dire circumstances--say we may be giving food for Christmas presents next year, not Ipods.

Who knows, but if we are to be humbled, and even if we are not, I see the farm and other like minded venues, serving as places where American lessons are re-learned, not in the stand-offish, dismissive manner of some museum docents, but as living, walking parables of a former age. It would be liberating to hear a real sermon given in a New England meeting house--not some survey-driven, seeker-friendly piece of feminist pyscho-pap. It would be liberating to see a real sergeant of colonial militia training the young men on the green, or a real "Titus" woman advising the young girls. It would be instructive to see a dramatization of the way American trade (business) was once conducted--not to make short term profits, but to build long term empires. It would be good to have a glass of hard cider with the selectmen of the town and hear how the work of a small township was conducted. It would be good to see the old Republic, the way it once looked, not because it was perfect, but because it hadn't abandoned the idea of truth entirely.

And, who knows, perhaps we could help, in some small way, turn our failing culture around.

Riley's Farm: Americans Made Here.

Valkyrie

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:41:00 EDT

Valkyrie

A little market insight before I get started: Applebee's was lean on customers tonight but the theater had a respectable showing for a Monday night. This must mean that people are more soul-hungry than food hungry. It fits in with my thinking about our own business; you can get reasonably good food in lots of places, but the needs of the human heart can't be served up on a paper plate.

Nine dollars and fifty cents for a little larger than life heroism?

I'll pay, even if it involves Tom Cruise. The director, Bryan Singer, admirably kept "Scientology Tom" buried very deeply under the contours of his character--Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who lost his life trying to assassinate Hitler. Indeed, the entire film doesn't feel dependent on any one celebrity presence, though there are certainly quite a unmistakably big film faces here (Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp). On the contrary, this was an ensemble effort, beginning to finish, and it explored that fascinating moment in time, repeated throughout the centuries, when a small band of honorable men and women realize--collectively if furtively--that they must confront, and destroy, a confederacy of evil.

When that evil has the rest of the nation in fear, when the most obvious of realities cannot even be stated, much less acted upon, when an honorable action must pay ransom to an entire nation's mis-placed trust in a man the inner circle knows to be a lunatic, it's a deliciously complex stew. Add in human cowardice, political maneuvering, abject fear, and it's all bully good theater.

It is also ennobling. It makes us pause to remember: Patriots don't always need to win. Their actions give a nation heart, even in loss, and they remind us that evil only succeeds in the short term. The executioners in this drama, the sorry Nazis who put Stauffenberg's friends to death, seemed to paint this on the screen, masterfully, in their performance. You can kill a patriot, but you cannot kill the truth.

God is watching, in other words.

And God laughs last.

The Church is Too Important for Theologians

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 03:48:00 EDT

Don't Miss Out!

Heah--we don't get this CRAZY this often!
Save on Riley's Farm Dinner Events.

The Deal ends in a little
less than
40 hours!

New Year -- Lights On

There's a strange, but very effective, sort of evasion available to people who emphasize "the basics."

A lot of reformed theologians--rightly concerned that mega-churches are teaching a "make me happy" gospel--turn our attention to the basics of the faith, and remind us that Christians have less and less Biblical literacy.

So far so good. However much you might like the advice, or the entertainment value, of Joel Osteen, Robert Schuller, or Oprah Winfrey, we do well to remind ourselves that they are not really preaching--much less emphasizing--the basics of the historic Christian faith. That strikes me as so obvious a reality that it doesn't warrant much attention.

What does warrant our attention is a peculiar kind of laziness, and evasion, going on even among the "reformers" in response to this danger. When you can't count on the reformers, you're in a LOT of trouble. Take a gander at W. Robert Godfrey's cap-stoning message at the White Horse Inn:

"...we have to be crystal clear that the gospel is not about making our families better, it's not about being happy and self-fulfilled, it's not about signs and wonders; the gospel is about Jesus, about the work that the God-man did 2,000 years ago in His life, in His death on the cross, in His resurrection; if we don't preach Christ and Him Crucified, if we don't make clear that Jesus Christ has fulfilled all righteousness in his life, has born fully the punishment of our sin on the cross in His death, and is our glorious Savior in His resurrection than we haven't preached the gospel, and there is no message more necessary and more vital in our time than that gospel truth about Jesus..."

Sounds pretty dang central, doesn't it? It sounds very much "back to basics." Unfortunately, it's lazy--in the extreme, and intellectually dishonest.

Imagine an apprentice builder and a journeyman engaged in the following dialogue:



                   APPRENTICE
         I'm having trouble getting this
         window installed.

                   JOURNEYMAN
         Wait a minute.  Do you even know
         how important the FOUNDATION is?

                   APPRENTICE
             (confused)
         Without the foundation, we don't 
         have anything?

                   JOURNEYMAN
         Exactly.  

                   APPRENTICE
         But.... I'm still having trouble with
         this window.

                   JOURNEYMAN
             (Irritated)
         Don't you get it, man?  The
         foundation is EVERYTHING.

                   APPRENTICE
         I get it.   The Foundation is
         first, but--

                   JOURNEYMAN
         The foundation is IT.  It's not 
         about your little window!  That's
         petty and materialistic and very
         American.  

                   APPRENTICE
         So...um...

The two are interrupted by a powerful, dusty wind blowing
through a gaping hole in the building.

                   APPRENTICE
             (choking)
         Just tell me what you want me to do with
         this thing.

�

The reality, unfortunately, is that the church is too important to be left to theologians--even good ones. They have their creeds and their orthodoxies and their heresies identified, but they are not very good at putting windows, or a roof on the building. Very often, if a Jim Dobson comes along and puts walls on the barn--so the flock will be protected from the enemy--hireling pastors like John MacArthur make fun of Christian political activists for not obsessing--24/7--on the cornerstone. This is precisely the sort of pharisaical near-sightedness that Jesus lamented when he called the Samaritan, with his different temple and different "theology", "good," and the Priest and the Levite not worthy of imitation.
�
�The facts are that the historic Christian church has always been concerned about bringing us to a point of what can only be called "happiness." It has always been concerned about strong families and good government. Why would Paul spend so much time counseling married couples in Ephesians or advocating good rulership in Romans? Why would Christ tell us that he comes to bring us "life" that we might have it (life) "more abundantly?" Yes, the gospel is not about us, but it is certainly for us.

�

Years ago, I noticed a peculiar sort of cop-out going on among Christians, and it would announce itself whenever we actually followed the admonition of Hebrews 10--to exhort each other to good works.

�

"Man," the anemic Christian would respond, "I just really want to do what God wants me to do. That has to be first."

�

Well, Duh. That's a bit like telling the linebacker to take down the quarterback and hearing him respond, "I really just want to make sure I have my helmet on."

�

Get your helmet on, then, man, and when God kicks some sense into you, get to work!

The Year in Review

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:35:00 EDT

Don't Miss Out!

Heah--we don't get this stupid this often! Save on Riley's Farm Dinner Events. The Deal ends in a little
less than 62 hours!
Heah--Mr. California Business Man (or Woman): is there anything more prestigious than saying to your clients and customers, "see, it's like this: I have several season passes to Riley's Farm Events."

What, pray tell, could be a more weighty sign of your affection for your customers?

The Year in Review
(Big Flash)

I threw together a few images from 2008, and the hard part was culling it down to a few good pictures. I have a prediliction for taking shots of scenery and buildings, but I always value, long term, the pictures I take of people most. (There's a life lesson in that, lad.)

More on yesterday's sermon about good Christian men and women needing to find the value in celebration: about twelve years ago, most of the Rileys attended a political rally, wearing Revolutionary War clothing, sporting bagpipes, drums, fifes, and 18th century long-hair and wigs of course. The largely conservative crowd--who revere the founders and the faith-life of the colonial era--were a little uncomfortable seeing their contemporary representations. The crowd didn't quite know what to do with bagpipes, fife and drum, and a re-enactor (not me) performing the "Give Me Liberty" speech. With a few exceptions, the crowd seemed to regard us as hippies in breeches.

On the flip side, Mary and I have seen "ladies and gentlemen" from the Renaissance Faire who would have made Nero's court look like a Concerned Women for America revival conference. On one occasion, when ordering refreshments at a Renaissance Faire beer court, I was nearly prompted to say to the maiden bringing the stein, "really. I just wanted an ale, not a dance." This may sound a little prude for someone advocating more, not less celebration, but I don't go to the beach with the kids either. I'm not sure how many American Christian men feel the same way, but--let's be honest--the beach is pure torture for real men.

The point I'm trying to make is that the extremes of a pagan age provoke a kind of over re-action that make Christians look as though they don't appreciate God's creation, as though the very wine God gave to gladden our hearts, and the romance that delighted God's wisest monarch (Song of Solomon) is somehow the enemy. (Continued...)

I've even met Christians who didn't know how to process a joke. One fellow assured me God had taken the thirst for beer away from him when he became born again. I wanted to respond, "when is He going to give it back to you? You're a pain in the neck without it." Old J. Vernon McGhie, and lots of other Christian bible teachers, have had to turn Song of Solomon into a metaphor for the love affair between Christ and the Church because they can't quite bring themselves to remember that God created sex.

Another story on that score: we knew a beautiful, very devout girl, growing up. All the boys loved her, but the rumor was she kicked her husband out of the bedroom on their honeymoon night, because the idea of sex had become so traumatic for her, so wrapped up in sin that she had no idea how to visualize a healthy version of the same reality. I see Christian marriages like this, that are wrapped up in a less dramatic version of the same weird trap. They see their "ministry" work as more important than their relationships; some of the women see their children as more important than their husbands--and eventually they lose those husbands. (News for you Christian ladies: your husband is more important than your children. If you love your children, make more time for your husband.)

The reason all of this is so important, both for redeeming the church and for redeeming our culture, is that no one really appreciates the "lite" version of anything. You don't drink lite beer because you like it. You drink it because you're being rationed. If Christians present a life that looks "rationed," that is a "lite" "reverent" "false" version of the real thing, they will have no currency with themselves or anyone else. I've never really liked most contemporary Christian music because it sounds like a derivative version of the pagan music around us. You can't slap a few scripture verses on Eminem and make it Christian. You need to get at the life source itself. Christian artists: go back to Handel and then work forward. Stop settling for three chords on the guitar and learn how to write a symphony.

Christians should be funnier, more articulate, more alive, more attractive, more intellectual, more martial, more peaceful, more joyful, more content than the morass of divorced, abortion-addicted pagans around us--not because we hate life, but because He came that we might have it "more abundantly."<

The God of the Feast

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 15:04:00 EDT

I'm trying to sell my customers on a little plan-ahead feasting this year, so theology and commerce will be mixed up in a bag today--a combination, indeed, I've been arguing has quite some merit anyway.

Two quick, purely hypothetical stories:

#1. A young man grows up in a hyper-legalistic church community with all sorts of rules, some of them Biblical, some of them pure gospel hobby invention. There is very little real celebration in his life. Even Birthday parties feel reverent--and false. He tries to live by the rules he's given, but his nature is at war with them, and he rebels. He leaves his wife and kids and goes out on the road and does his Easy Rider Impression. The stage is set for a new generation feeling abandoned, squabbles over child support, teenage rebellion, and pure misery.

#2. A young mother has a feeling her daughter's social life needs a little guidance, but she's too afraid to venture an opinion. She can't put a finger on the objection, except to say that her daughter's new crowd seems devoted to partying, and to little else. To cut to the chase, what follows, over the years, are two abortions, followed by unwed motherhood, followed by a drug addiction and eventually domestic violence. Again, the stage is set for a new generation feeling abandoned, squabbles over child support, teenage rebellion, and pure misery.

The stories are a little uni-dimensional but they are meant to represent two extremes in our social and religious response to the concept of "the feast."

Pagans, first of all, don't need to be told to feast, to party, to let go. "Letting go," after all, is really what the feast, in some measure, is really all about, for both believers and heathens. You "let go" of work, of obligations, of worry, of even propriety. (Dad wouldn't wear the New Year's hat and the polyester grass Hawaiian skirt to work, for example.) My wife recalls a story about Sandra Day O'Connor being invited to a Washington D.C. dinner party and being seated next to a professional athlete. After not striking up much of a conversation, the athlete handed Justice O'Connor a beer and said, "C'mon! Loosen up, Sandy, Baby."

A party is about letting go, about "loosening up." Unfortunately, this reality is reacted to in the extremes, and sometimes the extremes themselves reveal the virtue of balance and moderation. The #2 girl in the story above may find something liberating in a life of parties, but if she sees her boyfriend shacked up with another girl, down the hallway, the extremes are tested, and the party girl becomes the Puritan, insisting that she never intended to "loosen up" the reins on her mate. (And the Puritan, by the way, never was the puritan we have been taught to mock. The Bradfords and the Winthrops set out to brew beer very promptly, upon entering the New World.) On the other hand, there are some falsely devout believers who don't believe in any celebration at all, or in painfully dry re-creations of purely Biblical feast days. We knew a woman like this. Not even birthdays were celebrated in her home--and her children, by and large, left her--to go celebrate elsewhere.

The Bible tells us not to "be drunk" with wine, but it also has Jesus turning water into wine as His very first miracle. The Prodigal Son is seen to be chided for giving over his money for harlots, but when he returns, penitent, he is given a feast. The Bible says "wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging," but also "Bless the LORD, O my soul...He.. causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; And wine that maketh glad the heart of man.." (Psalm 104).

They say that C.S. Lewis would gather with his fellow believers ("The Inklings") at a pub, where they would workshop their literary creations over an ale. You see so many instances of virtues in balance there--fellowship, work, creation, celebration. It strikes me as the sort of place more Christian men ought to be--hard working, creative, but celebratory as well. It also reminds me of another C.S. Lewis quote that I'll have to paraphrase for now: "if you were to see a saint, an actual saint, you would be both awe-struck by his holiness and scandalized by his humanity."

If I were to fashion a congregation of believers, it would be full of men true to their wives, and wives who loved their husbands enough to be unashamed in their love for them--on every level, from spiritual to erotic. It would be full of men who loved the Bible, but who loved music as well, and engineering, and cars, and sports, and intellectual inquiry of every sort. They would know how to worship and they would know how to vote. They would know how to be gentle, but they would know how to fight. They would know how to pray, and they would know how to drink.

It's quite a tall request, but that's okay. It's my birthday.

Embracing the Paradox Between Emails

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:00:00 EDT


Heah--we don't get this stupid this often! Save on Riley's Farm Dinner Events. The Deal ends in a little less than 104 hours!

I have a bad habit of sending off a bulk email and then compulsively checking my incoming mail every ten minutes for the next two hours or so. It's a good way to catch up with people, but it's also a bit like being nine years old again--and checking the Christmas tree every hour. It's also a bit flattering to read the names on our email list. You have to be a real geek to scan through an email list, but there are some big time muckety-mucks on there--academics, lawyers, industry titans and--if you're star struck--lots of people who work in the bowels of the entertainment industry. I used to apologize for emails once a week, and then I realized that some of the internet magazines I read, send me an email almost every two hours. Frankly, I don't mind commercial speech. I'd rather have speech than no speech, and I've never found that the DEL key was very tiring. If you're too tired to hit the DELETE key, you should probably check into assisted living somewhere.

Our little home church is actually starting to get some numbers and a little discipline lately. We meet at the same time. One of three fathers gives the message. Our hymn singing is getting, um.... a little better. We really cipher out the passage and try to get at the bottom of the riddle--because, let me tell you, the master and the lord of the universe didn't tell parables to make the gospel easier. He's very much like a good professor: He wants to see who really wants to learn and who wants to cruise along in cheap, mystic overdrive. I've learned to embrace the paradoxes, to wrestle with them. (Try "Choose Ye This Day" and "The Lord made all things, even the wicked for the day of destruction." You could spend a lifetime on that one.)

Frankly, I like a manly Christianity--the tables turned over, the whip braided, the unapologetic way in which vipers get called vipers and white-washed tombs get called white washed tombs. At the same, time, I like the "burden is light" message. (Another paradox). There's a lot I haven't figured out--but the older I get, the more I realize that's the sign of a maturing Christian.

Excuse me now. I have to check my email.

Pondering the New Year

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 15:54:00 EDT

I haven't been writing much lately because I've been rather tediously engaged in making sure all of our dinner programs are ready to go for 2009. You Riley's Farm regulars (and big families) can save big by purchasing a 2009 10 Dinner Pass. If you apply it to events like Christmas in the Colonies you can save more than $100. This is a totally irresponsible offer on my part, so please don't take advantage of it. It ends January 2, 2009 at midnight.

We did well in the public house yesterday, for being open for the first time over the Christmas break.

Jeff Hammond and I had a friendly disagreement about this line in a previous farm journal entry:

The simple truth is that businesses provide for far more real human needs--spiritual and physical--than any church or government could ever hope to provide.

Perhaps this claim warrants more time. The truth is, of course, that we have no less an authority than The Master Himself when He tells us in Matthew 6:20: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.. And Jeff reminds me to read Ecclesiastes, where we find wise Solomon, sated with many wives and uncountable wealth, telling us "...What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?.."

Of course no one gets to take any of it away. The Bible, and much of the modern church, (ignoring much of the Old Testament's moral law but teaching tithing scrupulously), remind us that life is, indeed, ephemeral. We are dust. All is vanity.

That much is not in dispute, and to the extent that the church reminds us of where we really need to place our investment, the church is doing its job. Unfortunately, most of the church is not really doing its job, because it hasn't paused to consider what the Master was really saying. Consider it carefully. How can you "lay up" treasures in a different realm, if this life, and its routines, are without meaning? In the quoted verse, Jesus tells us some of our earthly actions "laying up" have eternal consequences. Clearly this physical life (the way we pray, the way we "take up our cross," the way we teach, the way we raise families, the way we conduct business) steps into that eternal life in significant ways. Our physical life, our wealth, our homes don't pass into the next life, but the memory of what we do here does. This doesn't mean we work our way to heaven, but the work we do here reflects whether we really believe in heaven or not. "Faith," as James tells us, "without works is dead."

The church would do well, moreover, to really consider the full measure of Matthew 6, because Jesus tells us that praying to "be seen of men" is an investment in this life, not the next--and yet we have this peculiar prejudice, among the faith community, that a corporate spiritual life--prayer meetings, Sunday school, "spiritual" retreats--are somehow more "holy" than the work we do everyday.

Perhaps an example will help make it more clear. We have a plumber who recently installed a "no scald" valve in our shower. When water pressure is being demanded by various appliances, before the valve was installed, you couldn't really trust the water temperature. Now, with the new valve, I praise the plumber (and God) every time I take a shower. Praise God for hot water. Praise the plumber for making it happen. On the other hand, years ago, a very evangelical house painter told me about his conversion and then proceeded to over spray white paint all over a brand new roof. He claimed the first rain would wash it off, but he was just too lazy to do good work. The stain remained for years. Mind you, both the plumber and the painter claimed to be Christians, but who, really, was "laying up" treasures above? The one who did great work or the one who talked about his conversion?

..And yet we see people of faith thinking their "church life" is somehow more holy, by virtue of--what?--it taking place inside a church? On Sunday? On a Biblical Sabbath? In the name of a "non-profit" ministry?

Hebrews 10 tells us "...And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another..." Plainly, it tells us the role of fellowship is to "provoke unto love and to good works," but I don't see anything about Sunday, about pews, about choirs, or anything prohibiting this work from being done at the office, in the classroom, at the building site. It's not that the conventional fellowship isn't appropriate, but the artificial division of a holy, eternal life pursued on Sunday and a life of vanity pursued the rest of the week seems like the height of falsehood to me. You have far more opportunities for seeking holiness, for "laying up treasure above," in the work you do everyday, in your business, than in the rest you take on Sunday.

Merry Christmas!

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 17:48:00 EDT

Well, we opened Christmas presents this morning, and the boys milked the cow and fed all the far-flung farm animals. Then we drove over the river (brook) in our sleigh (GMC Yukon) and through the woods (orchards) up to Grandmother's house, where we ate a hearty breakfast of sausage, bacon, french toast, and scrambled eggs--followed by the orange Grandpa had always dictated we eat after handfuls of See's candy.

I'm feeling powerfully fatigued right now, because I stayed up far too late and watched HBO's Rome II. I don't recommend HBO to anyone, really, except that--for a bunch of decadent, loin-centric heathens--they seem to have the art of storytelling down cold, and they also know more than a bit about set production. I'm never quite sure what their agenda is, but the picture of a cold, remorseless, sensual Roman empire seems to heighten the Biblical message of human depravity, and the need for Christ. There are very few human beings in this production by the standards of a Christian age. They are either sniveling cowards, cold-eyed killers, bribe-seeking politicians, porridge-poisoning kitchen knaves, or abject whore-mongers of every persuasion and gender. The faint glimmer of virtue is always snuffed out, whenever it flares up, and we are left with a picture of human beings as reptiles, with slivering, forked tongues. They pray to their pagan gods, and we see a lost people--the seed of righteousness--here and there, but it's all smothered up by a dead pantheon of useless idolatry. Their Roman gods don't answer prayers. They mock. They participate in the debauchery itself.

One of the reasons Christians don't really understand Christianity is that they don't understand history. The very fruits of Christianity--political liberty, tolerance, a sense of fair play, the equality of rich and poor before the law--are all taken for granted in an age that can't imagine human beings sacrificed in the arena for sport. Rome, after all, represented high civilization for the era and yet, by the standards of an age that has known Christ, it looks like a stinking hell with some imposing architecture. HBO, if nothing else, should be thanked for showing us what life was like before the era of Immanuel--God with us.

And we, in turn, should thank God for redeeming us, even if HBO won't.

Business as Ministry

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:48:00 EDT

A few years ago, I got into a bit of a spat with a family member who didn't think God's work could be done, essentially, in crass "commerce." She saw the work of the spirit going on in churches, non-profit ministries, and some branches of the government. She saw business people as motivated solely by "profit" and "greed." Pastors and social workers, on the other hand, were motivated by compassion. Furthermore, the message of "ministry" had to be focused on something overtly spiritual and couldn't take place in the mere provision of products and services.

Most of the faith world thinks the same thing. There's even a secular version of this going on when corporate America gives away free discounts to policemen and firemen. The world sees certain categories of work as noble, and well they may be, but I rise this morning, Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the noble small businessman--who will never get a government bailout, who will never own a corporate jet, who will never be given a "small businessman's day at Disneyland," but who, according to the U.S. Department of Labor provide 67 percent of American's first jobs and account for 55 percent of the country's innovations.

The simple truth is that businesses provide for far more real human needs--spiritual and physical--than any church or government could ever hope to provide. Businesses generate the profit that make government possible in the first place, and, generally, we are either employed, or patronizing businesses five days a week, as opposed to the one day a week we spend in church, or the one day in a hundred we have direct contact with the government. In church, we hear a sermon and we hear virtue described theoretically, in the third person, but if we sit down for dinner in our local favorite Mexican restaurant we see virtue--real service--first hand, in the flesh. My wife says there is a sermon being preached every time she goes to Dinosaur Tire, because everyone smiles, the work is done well, and she leaves knowing they tried their best to make our car safe--at a reasonable price. You are apt to learn more about human nature, and witness more virtue and sin on display, in the actions of your fellow workers than you are in a hundred Sundays of polished piety in the sanctuary.

The fact is that commerce can only exist, long term, if it provides for a real human need. If it isn't providing a real human need, it might be around because it's a state sanctioned monopoly or a corporate oligarchy propped up by lobbyists. We just agreed to pay $700 billion in bailouts to financial firms, not because those of us on main street are being helped, but because the power-brokers at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley convinced congress their billion dollar executives were essential to the body politic. That may, weirdly, be true, but only, again, long term, if those investment bankers help new "businesses" spring into existence and old businesses provide new products--products that meet human needs.

The current debate about tinkering with the economy focuses on preserving jobs at all costs, but it isn't "jobs" that make America. Jobs in industries that don't really serve the public are doomed to destruction, and if a business is not, in the last analysis, a "ministry," it really isn't a business either.

Christmas...

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 03:48:00 EDT

Well, this last Friday and Saturday night represented one of the iciest, coldest, crunchiest Christmas dinner seasons on record for us. I gave our guests advanced warning, and an unusual offer to apply their admission to other events, but very few took us up on it. (Two or three out of hundreds). The pull of the season is fairly strong, but if you've ever felt that sudden, horrific air-launch of a shoe hitting the wet ice, there are times, particularly as the party host, where you are tempted to think the snow scenes are better enjoyed on post cards. We have a very odd mandate here, in some ways: re-create the simplicity and the pastoral glory of the past, without any of the danger. I told Brandon and Jeff to keep a crew on in the parking lot, with tractor and chain ready, to help people with their cars and I instructed all of the gallant young men and women on our staff to lend an arm, always, when a guest looked unsure of their footing, but after you've taken all the pre-cautions, the best thing you can do is pray. And I did a lot of that.

Being open to the public over the winter is new for us, and at times, it feels sort of theoretical, but we had a very busy Saturday, with lots of friends and customers. One of our friends, a police lieutenant and his wife, brought up their girls' softball team, and we let his boys catch a few trout at cost. One young couple on their anniversary had attended the Christmas Carol event and they chose to come up and hang out on Saturday. That's always a good sign, and, in this case, it was intriguing for me, because one of them had an MBA, with experience in raising capital. I have a feeling, with longer term vacations being out of the budget for many people, a short day trip, or an overnight trip will be an attractive break from the monotony of budgeting. Riley's Farm Journal readers: are you game?

Rant ahead: in the era of Bernard Madoff (pronounced "made off") Ponzi schemes, it is beyond belief that we are hearing calls for "more regulation." Listen up, everyone: We've already GOT regulators. IN 2008, the Securities Exchange Commission had a budget of $913,000,000 (that's right, nearly a billion dollars). SEC employees enjoy fitness centers, education benefits, health plans, child care, and transit subsidies, in addition to the typical federal pension system that dwarfs the average citizen's mandated social security benefit. As a result of this bureaucracy, the average small business who seeks to court investors faces a minimum hurdle of $60,000-$100,000 if they choose to raise capital by going out to the open market, avoiding the bankers. (I know; I've done the shopping.) Because of this hyper-regulation, we have less innovation, fewer jobs, and, ultimately, less wealth. The regulation itself, moreover, favors the industry titans, who can afford dedicated compliance staff, and who have the money to schmooze public officials. (Bernard Madoff was a big supporter of that timeless friend of the Constitution, Senator Charles Schumer.)

Madoff and his employees contributed at least $267,000 at the federal level from 2001 to the present, according to campaign finance records. A member of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., was the top congressional recipient...(details)

There's a reason, in other words, why we don't have any new car companies. There's a reason why we spend our time giving bail outs to old, failed operations like Detroit. The people who have made it to the top of industry, and the regulators who are their chums, don't really like change, and they cannot stand competition. The good old boys in the civil service are too busy protecting the devil they know to be bothered getting to know the angels they don't.

And yet, our president-elect, smoothly and shamelessly observed that he would be taking over from people who thought regulation was the enemy. Barack: a reality check, please. The SEC's budget has grown from $422 million to $913 million under the eight years of the Bush administration, more than doubling in size and easily tripling the rate of inflation for the same period. If that is anti-regulatory, what, pray, would be "regulatory?"

The answer isn't in more red tape. The answer-- if there really is a federal answer--is in demanding that civil servants do their jobs, or abandon the pretext they are serving any useful function whatsoever.

Roses in December

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 14:46:00 EDT

Roses in December..

Click the picture above for a much larger version of winter in Oak Glen.

I'm thinking about adding a "u-pick rose field" out there, since five or six years of growing roses has led me to believe we can still have a rose crop fairly late in the year. We had beautiful clusters of deep red roses out there as late as last Friday--December 12th for future reference. Contrary to common belief, there are a lot of plants that like the cold--peas, strawberries, apples, and roses.

As usual, the crowds for Christmas in the Colonies and Christmas Carol have been nothing short of glowing in their warmth and appreciation for the farm, the family, and our fantastic staff. Here's an example, from Denise, who brings her family and friends all the way from Las Vegas to enjoy A Christmas Carol at the Old Packing Shed:

"..Good morning! After finally reaching home in Las Vegas last night after a weekend full of family and friends – I fell asleep again with a big smile on my face and a full heart! On behalf of our entire clan, that took up most of your first table this past Saturday night – THANK YOU for being here! Thank you for bringing back so many of the wonderful traditions that seem to fade from our lives without most people noticing. Thank you for the camaraderie (and not stopping our completely out of tune carol singing on the first hayride!) that envelopes everyone when we gather to enjoy the festivities that you all provide! From the little ones who watched in rapt attention to the Christmas Carol – even though they were scared to death of Scrooge in between sets- to the adults who couldn’t help themselves from grinning ear to ear while dancing the “Snake” dance and sashaying down the middle of what at first was a group of strangers but by night’s end felt like one group! The carol singing brought tears to more than one set of eyes and not just because as a group we sounded great, but because everyone was so proud when we got the song right! We loved the hot cider, the wonderful atmosphere, the delicious food and the excellent employees and family who absolutely make the evening! On behalf of all of us – we thank you for another memorable tradition that I am sure will continue to grow in numbers every year!! With full hearts and superb memories, we thank all of you and wish you a very merry Christmas!!

That's the stuff joy is made out of. Thanks, Denise!

The Era of the Doctored Economy

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:14:00 EDT

December 11, 2008 8:19 PM

The Era of the Doctored Economy

If this seems to be a weird farm journal entry, it might be because I am listening to CNBC on the internet as I write, and like almost all financial news, it is pretty hyperbolic stuff. The people who made fun of gold investing are telling people to buy gold stocks now. Globalists are wringing their hands that we aren't handing FIFTEEN BILLION DOLLARS to the auto industry, as though we were debating throwing a life preserver to Mother Teresa and not adding billions more to our grandchildren's debt.

What seems to be happening in America is that there is a vicious fight for resources, for salaries, for bonuses, for a standard of living that was once purchased by hard work and that is now heavily dependent on inertia. Everyone knows that the the auto industry can't survive unless both the management class and the unions agree to forego their sense of salary entitlement. Someone has to tell them it is not 1968 anymore. The cars they make are simply not the best in the world. My GMC Yukon features a cheap driver-side handle that peels off in finger-bleeding shards if it is exposed to the sun for more than few days.

... A few days go by, it is now...

December 13, 2008 11:25 AM

The Era of the Doctored Economy II

It turns out we can't even trust the chairman of one of the major stock exchanges in this country. Bernard Madoff, former chairman of Nasdaq and a huge contributor to Senator Charles Schumer, has been arrested and charged with a vast Ponzi scheme allegedly in excess of $50 billion dollars. One blogger this morning wondered if we would soon be hearing calls for an "investor bailout." (That sounds better than "wealthy Manhattan socialite bailout," I guess.)

Was it the Greeks who warned us that democracies begin to fail when the voters realize they can begin asking the public treasury to divide up the spoils?

Back to the title of this entry: the doctored economy. We have entered the era of such profound belief in the experts that we believe federal tinkering in the private sector can cure the seasonal economic flu. Did I just write "tinkering?" Seven hundred BILLION dollars is not tinkering, and a federal reserve that will not tell us where they put two TRILLION dollars is not just a case of fixing little holes in the roof with the petty cash fund. Our leaders aren't just putting a little alcohol swab on a scraped economic knee, they are willing to drag the patient into major surgery.

Business, I can tell you, just doesn't work that way. Even Barack Obama, this week, admitted that governments just aren't very good at running manufacturing plants. (Thank you, Lord! Perhaps there is a mind at the center of the hype we can believe in.)

What seems to be happening, really, is an instance of what you might call bleeding-heart conservatism, or hide-bound liberalism. When you think about it, the radical left is a lot more intent on preserving the status quo than traditional conservatives. There is nothing more radical than nature, for example. Ice ages come and go. Species flourish and then go extinct. Monsoons wipe out an Island paradise. But radical environmentalists insist on keeping "the environmental balance," even though Mother Nature has always been a little tipsy. Similarly, on the economic front, left-leaning Democrats want to preserve the Big 3 automakers, at all costs, to preserve those blue-collar manufacturing jobs. This is typical of a statist mentality. They want to be able to plan in a world that doesn't change. But the world changes. Good things happen, and so do bad things.

You might think that you could doctor up the economy they way old Doctor Nebeker used to doctor us up after the flu. You might even be tempted to think the economy is more simple than the human body, but imagine Doc Nebeker facing three hundred million of us at once in his waiting room. Even the kindly old doctor couldn't balance that many checkbooks and decide whose industry needed saving and whose special need warranted the printing of an extra trillion in fiat currency. If Doctor Nebeker couldn't do that, neither can Ben Bernanke.

The truth is that the Almighty gave us the free market as the best way to decide wages and prices this side of heaven. If you let the market work, it stops a lot of whining and fist-pounding and baby-brat screaming about who deserves what. If you want a lot of goodies, find a skill or craft a product that is in demand. If you don't want a lot of goodies, and you will settle for a box of Wheaties and a mini-fridge to hold your low-fat milk, get a job tearing down boxes at the liquor store--but DON'T call your congressman. He's not a very good doctor on that front.

The Constitution of the United States does not guarantee you a living. It promises to stay out of your way while you try to make one.

Theoretically, at least.

Just Stay Away from That Tree Right There...

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 21:03:00 EDT

Eat Everything Else You Want,
Just Stay Away from That Tree Right There...

Yesterday's story of the run-away servant has me thinking about a cosmic, theological dilemma I've wrestled with, on and off, my whole life. This puzzle could be introduced in many ways, but let's take something topical: O.J. Simpson. I remember, as a teenager, seeing a wall-sized mural of O.J. Simpson--all Trojan Red and Gold--crashing through a line of defenders. There was no stopping him. He was half-man, half-mustang, and once he broke free, the idea of getting between him and a touchdown seemed laughable. Later, when he became a celebrity, there appeared to be an effortlessness about him, an ease, that seemed something like what you would imagine from a citizen of Eden. He had it all--fortune, beautiful women, golf, celebrity, friends. He didn't even have to pick the fruit; it fell into his hands. You might say he had it so easy that it became his curse: when things didn't go his way, when life presented to him the one apple he couldn't really eat, he wound up in chains.


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All of us experience this in a smaller way. Even the run-away servant with the six month old "man child" on her hip. On a December morning in the winter-killing months of Colonial Pennsylvania, would you steal away from the warmth of a tavern, and guaranteed board and food, to go find the errant rake that left you alone and in a family way?

The point here, of course, is that we're born with a hunger for precisely that portion of reality we don't control. "..Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.."

I can't pretend to unlock the mystery of this portion of God's reality, but I think the key to contentment must come from contemplating it in greater depth, since almost every story of misery in human history seems connected to it: David had it pretty good, but then he sees Bathsheba over there on the rooftop; Judas had the counsel of Jesus, but the thirty pieces of silver looked better. King George had a vast empire, but he couldn't abide even a small infringement upon his franchise. Napoleon could probably have retained the whole of Europe, if he didn't insist on Russia as well.

Not every instance of "reaching," is an infringement of God's law. Certain kinds of ambition, and zeal, are a good thing, but the route to the treasure has to be honorable. Think of Good King Boaz, waiting for Ruth, or Jesus, ignoring the Devil's temptation, and earning the kingdom by pleasing the Father.

Still, the older you get, the more you see this pattern of discontent everywhere and it leads to bad choices. You see people taking short-cuts--men dumping one wife for another, girls taking up with boyfriends they know will not care for them, businessmen promising one thing and delivering another. It's all a different version of what Adam and Eve fell for in the garden--taking something they shouldn't. U-pick farmers see this sort of thing all the time. The sweetest apple is the one you don't pay for.

So far, this is a reality we all understand: we want what we can't have, but I suppose my question is--why? Why is this dissatisfaction so squarely at the center of our existence? The primal story of mankind--Genesis--is about an act of disobedience so outrageous it would be something like setting a young pair of lovers down in Monte Carlo and saying "you can have everything you want, all the food, wine, music you can imagine; you can have a different room in the resort every night; you can have any limousine, any ballroom, any dessert you can name. Salma Hayek will make you pancakes every morning and Morgan Freeman will read you bedtime stories. It's all yours--everything. Just don't eat any of those strange little lemons on that tree in the courtyard."

What makes those little lemons tantalizing beyond description? And why would Jesus pray, to the Father, "lead us not into temptation?" Is there a secret cosmic test going on? Are we being tested to see how well we carry out the mission? Are we better off--as the Lord's prayer seems to imply--praying to avoid the mission altogether?

Sometimes we think that doing the right thing should feel attractive and doing the wrong thing should feel revolting, but, our existence is precisely the opposite. Doing the wrong thing can feel delicious and doing the right thing can be bitter beyond description. The wrong thing tastes good, and leaves a bad after-taste. The right thing can taste bad and makes you feel better. In either case, temptation seems to be part of the plan. "Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil." (Sounds very much like a test, doesn't it?) Even more strangely, the plan--like a play requiring a villain--seems to include the absolute necessity that some temptations succeed: "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!"

Again, we see it all around us, in less Judas-style intensity: good people make bad decisions and they do it because those bad decisions "taste good." They waste time. They eat too much. They date the wrong people. They indulge malicious gossip. They eat the honey-comb of sin and then act as though they shouldn't be stung.

Back to the poor, runaway English bond servant: Fulfilling her bond to her master, apart from her lover, wouldn't be tempting. It would be bitter and lonely. It would even carry with it the pain of parenting a child without a partner, but there is little doubt that it would be the honorable, lawful course, but her story is already in the book of history--unalterable now, as perhaps it was before it was ever written?

I don't pretend to know for sure. Like I say, it's a p

This Day in the History of Common Folk

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 01:58:00 EDT

I guess run-aways have the last laugh: their stories get recorded with more thoroughness than our more respectable ancestors. I'm always looking for some instance of the common life in the papers, and here's the brief story of Rachel Pickerin, who ran away from her master on this day 262 years ago:

Rachel's master, the keeper of a tavern in Concord (PA, not MA), some ten or fifteen miles west of Philadelphia, was like many masters of the era: they were irritated. They paid good money for bond servants, so as to serve out their seven year indenture, and then the scurvy nymphs run away, with lots of good clothing, and in this case looking for a papa who appeared to care less about Rachel and her child, than the keeper of the tavern. I've seen scores of run-away ads where the master describes the errant servant as having an "impudent look," a "low manner of speaking," as prone "to telling tales." Thomas Clemson even wrote a poem about all the vices of one Joseph Willard. ("..His Birth Bucks County did adorn, To all his Friends he is a Scorn..")

You also get to confirm use of the language when you read these papers. A "baby boy" in this era can be called "a fat man child." I found another instance of a curse in common use today ("S.O.B.") that was also in common use in 1746, except that the papers spelled it right out, when describing the language of a highway-robber.

So, this Christmas if you're a Kerlin and you happen to run into a Pickerin, see if you can find out what ever happened to that old rascal William Peters.

Cs the Thing...

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 13:45:00 EDT

We've had two fine nights of carol singing, cidered ham, candied carots, creamy corn chowder and other festive treats that start with a "C" this week. That's Bill Blanchard's singers on the right, at a KVCR Dickens benefit on Thursday night, here at the Hawk's Head Public House. (photo courtesy of Richard Crow, husband to Beverly, third from left.)

If you could see the view out my window right now, you would think my home is plaster-wrapped with a technicolor billboard of Fall New England scenes. It's golden out there. Let's kick the recession in the pants today, people. Get up here and spend a little bargain time with your family.

I've been watching a lot of Peter Schiff these days. It's hard not to watch somebody who called the real estate bubble and the dot-com bubble and the equities bubble. He says we need to start building "real things" again, which fits in very well with my desire to have someone in the extended Riley clan start a full-scale fruit drying and processing facility up here. I want my dried pear snacks.

..but for now, I guess I'll just have to settle for Tina's scrumptilliumptious garden omelet downstairs.

See you there...

Confidence

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:28:00 EDT

Mary has a weakness for nativity scenes. She bought a really nice one at Costco a few years ago. It met our standards: it looked "Old World" right out of the box, with muted alabaster and umber tones, and lifelike faces, and robes of pale rose and milky persimmon. It was solemn, and hopeful--and ceramic. The bottom line is that seven year old Gabriel broke one of the wise men last year. Mary harbors a little resentment for this, and I can tell it's an issue with them from time to time.

"We can just pretend one of the wise men is going to the bathroom," Gabriel said.

"That's not funny," Mary said.

I buried my face in a pillow, and out of support for Mary, I pretended I was laughing at something Nicholas said.

"What are you laughing at?" Gabriel said.
"Oh. Something Nicholas said earlier today."
Gabriel, with his ferret-like cunning, knew I was not telling the truth.
"I was the first one to say that," Gabriel insisted.
"Say what?" I asked.
"I was the first one to say, 'let's just pretend the wise man is--'"
"But let's just pretend Nicholas said it."
"No! I was the first one to say that!"

There are probably several homiletics to be had here, but, certainly, here's one: we spend a lot of our time worrying about our possessions--both real and intellectual. I know I have a Manfrotto monopod around here someplace, and a cherry-wood camp-desk full of brass quills, and the thought of replacing them fills me with fatigue and irritation.

We worry about what George Carlin called "our stuff" all the time.

The Master tells us not to "worry." (My mind turned the King James version into worry, though that word, "worry," doesn't appear there.) It goes like this:

And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:28-34).

Close enough I guess. "Don't worry 'bout it." "Don't sweat the small stuff." "Be happy." "Have a positive attitude." "I've got it covered." More properly: "God is in control and He loves you."

Or, as George Bailey put it last night, after the bank run on the savings and loan, "just remember, this thing isn't as black as it appears."

And that is, of course, the truth. Nothing is ever as bad as it seems, particularly if you believe what Jesus says, "your heavenly Father knoweth ye have need of all these things." The startling reality, for contemporary minds, is that even the stock market confirms this reality. What is the difference between a $13,000 Dow Jones and an $8,400 Dow Jones?

Confidence. It's still hard getting your mind around it, but a Southern California man who thought he owned a $400,000 home two years ago, was really counting up a personal balance sheet that was built on optimism, confidence, and sheer faith that millions of young workers were certain they would be able to afford his home--should he ever want to sell it. Everything we buy, and everything we own, is a function of how much confidence we have in our ability to pay for it, and how much confidence we have in each other as members of a productive, growing economy. Even when the super-wealthy buy a $50,000 piece of jewelry, one way of looking it, aside from the extravagance of the thing itself, is to conclude that they have a lot of confidence in the value the rest of society puts in their other assets--the assets they use to pay for the basics. One of the critical differences between a healthy, vibrant capitalist economy and a dreary, ration-scrapping socialist nightmare is a daily dose of confidence. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

What we keep forgetting, in this confidence formula, however, is that God assures us that our real faith has to be in Him. The past two years have shown us that you can't really trust politicians. You can't really trust the financial rating companies. It's getting harder and harder to trust historic assumptions about real estate and the stock market. Our entire system of government was based on the notion that you can only muster up a little confidence in the system, if the foibles of human beings are throttled by "checks and balances." The legislature checks the judiciary. The executive appoints the judiciary. Why? Confidence. Nehemiah put four treasurers on the job of counting the money. Why four? It builds confidence in the accounting. Theoretically, our public business needs to be conducted before the public, in open meetings. Why? It builds confidence.


One of the Signs that "It's a Wonderful Life." "...Special Prayers as Requested by President Truman.."

The humanists would like us to believe we have to have faith in each other--sans God. Apparently, the new capitol visitor center in Washington DC is a kind of tribute to the hopes of mankind somehow being wrapped up in the great edifice of a magnanimous federal government. What utter, dreary rot and pure intellectual dreck. The founders--Patrick Henry especially--would have gagged on the notion that government is anything other than a necessary evil. The only people who really get misty at the thought of expanding federal power are the folks who get a little lucre to go with their pledge of allegiance. (I had an uncle who worked for the Feds; he seemed to get a big kick out of anyone fighting the IRS; he was, after all, on the receiving end of that struggle.)

It's not that our system's might and power can't be used to crush evil. I think it's great we brought fascism and the death camps to an end, but it wasn't just because we had faith in each other.

Look who Harry Truman had to thank for the matter.

Movie Making

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:06:00 EDT

Listening to a story is something like being in the back seat of a station wagon as an eleven year old.

If you are on your way to Disneyland, and your friend's mother--Elanor Brayshaw--is driving, and she has three stops to make along the way, and they involve pricing five gallon tin containers for wheat storage, you get the feeling you will never arrive at the promised land. Let's say Mrs. Brayshaw actually gets you to the parking lot at Disneyland and then she has you all wait on the asphalt while she shuffles grain and stacks tin.

The point is that good storytelling does two things: it promises "Disneyland" and it gives you the feeling, all along the way, that you will actually get there. If you are in the back seat of the story-telling station wagon and the driver keeps making turns into dusty industrial parks and down desperately empty desert frontage roads, and the station wagon has that rotting banana smell, and three other kids keep asking "when will we get there," you get the feeling that you got in the wrong car. You should have gone with the older kids, in your brother's T-bird.

Years ago, in college, a writing teacher asked a fellow student, "what is that sentence doing there? You don't need that sentence at all."

I thought to myself, rebelliously, "it's there because he wrote it."

I was wrong. The point is that brevity is both the soul of wit--and storytelling. Cutting is the real art of the master artist. Most really great photographs have a way of simplifying life--cutting it down to the primary colors. There is a dazzling focus on just that reality the photographer wanted to emphasize--the wrinkled smile of a Russian peasant or the black foreground of a weathered bicycle, with moonlight shining through the spokes.

It is true that 19th century story-telling was more leisurely. Dickens wandered all over the place, but there were no industrial side roads or rotten bananas along the way. Every observation was fresh, even if it did represent a sideshow on the way to the theme park.

I keep reminding myself of this when I cut this movie/television pilot. Cut, cut, cut, cut. I'm about to edit a non-stop public house "talk" scene, which the writer (me) foolishly didn't break with any outdoor action.

Keep thinking about that poor eleven year old, Jim. You were there once.

Pipe us a Tune

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:32:00 EDT

If Mr. Hanna--a World War II combat marine--is any guide to longevity, the first chapter in his book would have to read something like "Cultivate a Thousand Interests."

He brought up his newly acquired Calliope today and cranked out sweet circus pipe tunes all morning.

My dad had a weakness for calliope music. You don't think of a hard-charging businessman, pausing to purchase a collection of 1880s circus tunes, but he did just that one night, and told Scott and I to give it a listen. "Isn't that something?" he asked--and it was. It must have been about 1971.

Merry Christmas, Dad. You would have enjoyed today's concert.

Fall's Colorful Rancor

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 14:40:00 EDT

We have a fine, wet, brass-and-mustard morning going here for Thanksgiving day. I've noticed that "Red" Oak leaves are actually a dusty chocolate color, and "Ash" trees look like burnt cinnamon in the fall. The Poplars are not acting in concert this year--some getting all sunrise-yellow and some insisting on their parsley green summer dresses. We heard a great breaking sound yesterday across the road, an explosion in the woods that sounded very much like lightning. A great 400 year old live oak, long dead, finally gave up its perch and fell into little San Gorgonio Creek, gracefully avoiding the power lines. (But creating a dam?)

The prettiest restrooms on any farm west of Nova Scotia are nearing completion. (Click the picture on the left for a larger view.) The Christmas Trees are all set up under the rose arbor and we're selling them fresh, green, and cheap, on the hopes that you'll join us for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Logan Creighton and the rest of our living history staff are ready to show you all how to bake pies and make Christmas wreaths as well.

More on yesterday's nutty professor: there's an odd, mean-spirited consequence to indulging the anti-Thanksgiving martyrs. It makes for a very weird children's ethnic-message. "Kids, you are all descended from genocidal predators. Have a good holiday tomorrow."

We should all be clear about what is going on here. It's called divide and conquer. There are really just two sorts of people who exist in the world--those who are seeking the truth, and those who aren't. Sometimes, we get distracted with other labels--black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Native American, capitalist, collectivist, Democrat, Republican--but those labels, at their worst, are just ways of keeping us divided and clawing holes in each other. There are two divisions in the world, and we should be clear about that division. But it's not as simple, and as trite, as "minority struggle" or "economic justice" or "glass ceiling." The division is between good and evil. The people who use the other labels are usually getting paid for it--directly or indirectly.

Who, after all, has the impulse to take a collective expression of thanks for the harvest, and a moment of inter-racial peace, and compare it to Nazi genocide? I'll tell you: it's someone given over to an evil heart, to division, to complaint, to strife for the sheer sake of strife. It's someone who wants to make headlines and sell books. The father of lies has a very artful strategy when you think about it. Who among us doesn't really want to blame our problems on someone else? ("The cigarette companies are forcing cancer on me." "I've built my home; now if everyone else would just become an environmentalist, I would have more nature around me." "My ancestors were unjustly treated, so pay me for their troubles.")

The hard work of mutual sacrifice, mutual compromise, balance, and "treating others as you would be treated," isn't as easy as holding an emotional pistol to someone's head and saying, "it's all your fault."

Does this mean we don't learn from history? Does this mean we don't seek justice? Does this mean we don't assign blame where blame should be assigned? Of course not. But it does mean giving up an emotional investment in contention just for contention's sake. It also means making a difficult investment in self reflection as well. Christ didn't tell us not to remove the speck from our brother's eye, just make sure you don't have any planks--or specks--in yours. We are supposed to rebuke each other, but only after we have rebuked ourselves first.

In the instance of Thanksgiving, Native Americans simply can't criticize the west without fessing up to some of their own sins. Even now, in Brazil, a group of missionaries is being slandered merely for attempting to bring an end to infanticide among primitive Amazonians. The story speaks for itself. There is a colossal absurdity in a western government protecting a native culture's practice of infanticide, merely because--what?--it doesn't want to appear judgmental? Did I just write that sentence? Did I just have to write that sentence? Here's how it works: a native culture kills "defective" children and the missionaries are "genocidal" for protecting them. At one point, some sort of British field worker, or anthropologist, says, "I don't' want to defend infanticide, but.." (And what follows, of course, is a defense of infanticide.) This is really nothing more than racism with an academic stamp. It's saying, effectively, "we have our central air homes and our inoculations up to date," but let's keep these native Amazonian's subject to disease, poor shelter, child-killing and illiteracy."

Why? As a human zoo? As a pool for more dissertations? To protect the tourism industry?

The pilgrims didn't believe there was one truth for an Algonquin and one truth for an Englishman. In that respect, they were less racist than their great grandchildren seeking tenure.

Dander Up..

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:05:00 EDT

You all know how peace-loving and mellow I am most of the time, but this story, covering the shameless political extortion of an elementary school Thanksgiving feast, by an "academic" who sees genocide in a Land-o-Lakes butter logo, really got my Irish up. It seems the students of Condit Elementary have been dressing up as Pilgrims and Indians for forty years, and this year the tradition was nearly broken by an assistant professor with a cause. Michella Raheja, whose credits include "Pretending to Be Me: Ethnic Transvestism and Cross-Writing" was quoted by the Los Angeles Times as complaining to her child's teacher in the following terms:

"It's demeaning. I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history."

So--keeping our outrage-ducks in order--Pilgrims can be reduced to Nazis and Slave-masters, but staging a heritage party for children, with construction paper costumes, is the real offense. It's difficult keeping things straight out here in blue country: In California, we not only get a daily dose of quackery, we actually pay for it. (Raheja is an assistant professor at UCR.) Is it any wonder more and more parents are finally beginning to realize a non-technical higher education just isn't worth the price? You can't get a liberal arts education at a liberal university, in other words. They are too busy teaching native cross-dressing to be bothered with Augustine or the Brontë Sisters.

Beyond the outrage, however, Americans should be saddened by this display of narcissistic martyrdom and Holocaust trivialization. Even the Los Angeles Times noted that Thanksgiving Celebrations really are a reminder that Americans should celebrate the best in all of our traditions, not to mention the moments where differences were forgotten in the enjoyment of a feast, and in common thanks to the Almighty, (even if the Times missed that last reality.)

There is certainly value in dissent, but the dissent has to be rooted in reality. The Claremont School district, for bowing to this lunacy, was properly scolded by the majority of parents who brought their children to school, wearing their Thanksgiving costumes--against the politically obsequious ruling that heritage was simply against policy.

And that is a victory for sanity.

The Bury-Your-Talent-in-the-Dirt Fellowship

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:56:00 EDT

I was once told the story of a builder who asked his workers to measure the ceiling heights of a large new home that was being framed. Across the far corners of the house, they were off by a fraction of an inch. I'm not construction savvy enough to remember the size of the actual fraction, but my friend, who told me the story, was on the crew that day and he told me they were all sent home, while the framing contractor looked for their error. No one on the job could believe they were holding up work to look for a sliver of an inch, but that was the reputation of this builder. He wanted exactitude. He discovered the error, and corrected it, even though parts of the job had to be re-done.

Granted, most of the time we have to settle for some degree of imprecision in our lives. In the context of orthodox, historic Christianity, by definition, we are always falling short of the standard. Our righteousness is as as "filthy rags." Blessed little Joseph was a bit of a bragger, Noah had a drinking problem, and we all know King David's errors. Still, the same scriptures tell us to treat "as heathens" those who won't be corrected. They tell us not to give bread to those who won't work. They urge us on to "finish the race," and not just "enter" the race. We are told two seemingly different things: don't worry about your needs ("the lilies of the field") and get to work, ("...he that doth serve.") We are told to "judge not," but "hate the evil, love the Good.."

We are flawed creatures, paradoxically called to perfection. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your father in heaven is perfect." Certainly, when we seat ourselves down in a jumbo-jet, we hope the pilot has an appreciation for perfection, and we hope the same thing for the aircraft mechanic, and the sky marshall, and the air traffic controller. When we buy a house, we hope the builder was troubled--deeply troubled--by imperfection.

Clearly, as a culture, we don't wrestle with this paradox of error and perfection enough. You might argue that Islamic culture errs on the side of a law that has no mercy, and so there is little innovation, and even very little discussion. Who feels like pitching new product ideas to a panel of ayatollahs? Who makes a film in a country where a bad review means losing your head? On the other hand, are American children really better off being the products of a rampant-divorce culture in the post-Christian age? Are we so broad in our standard that we want no standard at all? Do loving people really want kindergartners to learn to accept and embrace trans-genderism? Are American teenage girls really better served by laws that bar their parents from consenting to an abortion?

A Biblical culture, a truly Biblical culture, knows both the value of a standard, and the reality of man's nature. It balances justice and mercy. I keep seeing this reality in the old colonial courts. In cases of remorseless murder or rape, the trial and execution were swift, but in lesser instances where extenuating circumstances call for mercy, the accused was sometimes reprieved at the very last minute, with the very rope around his neck. The needs of justice, and of mercy, were balanced. There were laws on the books so harsh they were never enforced, but they were left there to remind us of our obligation to be "perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect."

A call for a more just, more merciful, more perfect, more covenantal society are branded "legalistic" today. Our churches are full of people grateful for a Christ who has freed them to be sloppy, lazy, inarticulate, and cowardly. Very plainly, the church has become what Paul warned against: churches that effectively celebrate vice so as to praise God for His mercy. They might as well be labeled the "Sin, that Grace May Abound Congregations," or the "Bury Your Talent In the Dirt Fellowships." How else, could pro-abortion sentiment be on the rise among young evangelicals? How else could a majority of Catholics have violated the pro-life teaching of their priests in the last election?

The churches, very simply, are full of pastoral leaders who engage in the false tolerance of treating their flocks as being too stupid to understand the paradox of mercy and judgment. Clearly they are not fit to shepherd their flocks, because they don't hate evil enough to preach against it, and if they don't hate evil enough to chastise sinners, are they really fit to preach a Christ who forgives sin?

Yes, we are sinners. Yes, we are forgiven.

And Yes, we need to get to work building the kingdom.

The Better, and Worse, Angels of our Nature

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 12:08:00 EDT

I'm deep into stacking up video clips and fading in audio and toggling color-correction for our production of "Courage, New Hampshire," so I missed farm-journaling yesterday.

In any given day, our personal narratives are full of tedium, and I think the task of writing a blog has something to do with distilling the instructive moments. Here's one: yesterday, I caught a girl slinging rocks out into the parking lot, from behind the grape arbor. I told her, "you know, young lady, you really should have some idea about your target. You could hit someone out there, and you wouldn't even know it." She looked right back at me. "That's the point," she said, and then let go with another stone. (Can we hire a knuckle-wrapping nun?)

Just a few minutes later, I walked into the public house, and there was a young man picking up a pastry he had ordered.

"Thank you for visiting us," I said to him.

At first he was shy and didn't respond. He walked by me and and then stopped in the doorway. I had already turned my back. He called out to me.

"Sir?" he said. "I enjoyed it very much."

Two kids--one of them a snarling, venomous Sandra Bernhardt, another an embryonic Sidney Poitier, one being told the truth and spitting on it, and another anxious to show kindness, even if he had to work at finding the words.

We see proof of good and evil every day. We struggle with it every minute of our lives. We do what we shouldn't, and we don't do what we should. We know we are cutting corners. We know we are blaming others because it's easier than reforming ourselves. We know there is some moment of encouragement that we could give--but won't. Sometimes, we know we are being mean, and hurtful, just for the sheer, cussed spleen of it. The other day I complimented Lockton for reading a book without being prompted, and the timing of that one compliment bore fruit. I saw all of the kids, engrossed in novels the next day. Sin crushes the spirit. Virtue brings peace. We see that basic reality everywhere.

Why--with so much good and evil around us--have the words themselves become comic? Why can't a police watch commander begin the day with the words, "men, today, we will be a scourge to evil and a blessing to the righteous?" Why would director Roland Emmerich opine "we don't want to be teaching any lessons in this movie?" Why are you unlikely to hear a teacher say, "children, I expect you to be good boys and girls--obedient, respectful, and anxious to learn--but you will feel my wrath, and this ruler, if you do evil?"

Is it because no one trusts anyone else's definitions? I find that hard to believe. Anyone with eyes in their heads would have to conclude rock-slinging girl was given over to evil and gratitude-boy was seeking goodness.

Is it because we want to examine causes? Again, who cares about the "causes" or rock-slinging girl's mean-spiritedness? Would a chain of directed pain justify doling out random pain to others?

In truth, we all know the definitions of good and evil--its basic contours--and we are without excuse, but our very knowledge convicts us. Moral ambiguity isn't more sophisticated than moral clarity; it's just easier.

Our public dialogue would be infinitely more sane if we employed our native moral sense, if we stopped blaming external realities for internal failings.

We should be talking less about "change" and "hope," in other words, and more about "good" and "evil." When we pray, we should pray that our new political leadership is delivered--from its own shallowness.

Farm Roundup and Another of My Snobby Cultural Quips

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:42:00 EDT

OLD OLD NEWS: We now have Colonial Newspapers--make that Newspaper--for sale. If we sell even one copy, it will mean we are growing faster than the Los Angeles Times. Here's the concept: for as little as $3.75 a month, you get four BIG pages of very old news delivered to your home. The first re-print is of the New Hampshire Gazette dated January 30, 1767. Granted, this is a gift for the real high-brown in your household, the guy or girl who likes to brew a cup of very subtle herbal tea, repair to a comfortable chair on the porch and commune with the ancients. You have to be a real sophisticate, in other words, to look forward to your delivery of an 18th century newspaper, but even if you're not, the first issue speaks of cannibalism and gold-diggers. So there! (There's a little Rupert Murdoch in everyone, I guess.)

Adventures in the Old World, Christmas Style: We have new Christmas-based additions to our Adventures in the Old World program. Come out to the farm, make your own Christmas Wreath with local foliage, decorate ginger bread, throw a tomahawk, grab a walking stick and enjoy the cold country air. Then take in a hot cider and a chicken pot pie at the public house. Is that Yuletide or what? If that's not Christmas, I'm the High Duke of Curmudgeonville.

In the Good Old Summer Time: You read that correctly, madame. It's time to start thinking about Summer Day Camp at Riley's Farm. We don't have all of our prices yet, but in a few days, I'll announce a discount for early bookings. Memo to Jeff Hammond: google other day camps and see what kind of discount is given to forward-thinking moms and dads.

Snob-fest: okay, so Mary and I are in a Christian book store looking for a family gift, and--whoah-nelly!--I round the corner and there on the floor, cross-legged, are two teenage maidens, book-shopping--one of them doing a refrigerator-repairman impression. It used to be that Christian missionaries would have to travel all the way to Fiji to get the native girls to cover up, but now all you have to do visit the local, um, strip mall. In the car, on the way home, I said to Mary, "Am I a Pharisee for thinking, maybe, some matron in the local Sunday School should be saying, 'heah, girls, liberty in Christ is one thing, but you don't want to go husband-shopping by cracking a foot of southern exposure in the Joel Osteen section?"

Okay, so you get two snobby impressions for the price of one: have you ever noticed there is an etiquette about getting to your table in a restaurant? We saw an older couple taken to their seat last night. A moment later, they were standing next to us, quietly asking the server for another table. Mary said this was their third request. They had been seated once, twice, and now they were actually scanning the whole place for a third spot.

"I couldn't hear that," I asked Mary. "What was she after?"
"She says there are too many lights, too many people." Mary paused. "Too much draft, too close to the kitchen, too close to the bar television."
"This is Applebee's," I said. "What was she thinking?"

I looked up at them, in the distance now, testing another table.

There was a poor, tired, friendly looking man next to her. Her husband.

I'm saying a prayer for him now.

The Coming Pruning Season

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:30:00 EDT

In a few weeks, when it starts to get cold, we'll begin hacking down the raspberry canes right to the ground; we'll chop down sick apple trees and we'll plant younger, more vibrant grafts in the holes left behind. The roses and the grape vines will be cut back and all of the fields will get ripped up two or three times--as a way of killing of the weeds. "Cutting back" is the way to keep a farm growing.

It's very likely we will all be going through something like this as a country soon. Why? Because we have a lot of dead wood. Consider a few recent headlines:

Despite bailouts, and perhaps using the borrowed funds, many Wall Street Financial Firms will be paying lavish, multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives. Details.

Even as it begs the Federal Government for financial assistance, GM allocates $17 million for its workers' Viagra needs. Details.

The State of California proposed $118,000 for two workers to distribute arts and crafts to death row inmates. Details.

Keep in mind, these are just the stories that bring the phenomenal waste into high relief. Our system--both the public and the private sector--is full of the indefensible and the unnecessary and what you might call the ubiquitous false freebie. A pediatrician once told me. "In the old days, there were grandmas, and the need for pocket cash, that acted as the check on a doctor visit. Now, with the $5 co-pay, the waiting rooms are full of people who think their health care doesn't cost anything."

When you combine the false-freebie with the assumption of growth, you find companies and government planning to pay these costs by "growing" into them. Social Security is supposed to work, on the false assumption that our population, and our economy will always grow. The entire sub-prime debacle was caused by the false assumption that real estate prices MUST escalate. Dead-beat borrowers, in other words, would be protected by the growth in the underlying value of their homes.

I think we all know someone who works for a public entity, or one of the world's super-firms, and we hear about the benefits, the vacations, the pensions that are far beyond the imagination of anyone struggling to run, or help manage, a small business. To use the orchard metaphor, these mega-entities are just older trees, with more apples on them. When the tree is healthy, it produces more, and you would expect the workers to share in the bounty.

But when the tree shows signs of decay, if you want it to live, you need to start cutting back. You need to work harder to save it, and you might even need to accept fewer apples in your basket for a few years.

I think the resentment the electorate feels at the bailout is the sense that no matter how sick the old trees are, no one will endure any pruning. Taxing the working economy, which is primarily small business, to preserve the comfortable status quo of the non-market economy (de facto corporate monopolies and state agencies) will only delay the reckoning further. If the prisoners need to be stacked up five deep in the jails, to save money, start stacking. If the $250,000 a year agency head, needs to scale back to $150,000, so be it. Financial executives and government employees and contract-protected union workers will all need to do what those of us in the small business world have always had to do--expect fewer entitlements, less salary, and more work.

..But it's good for the soul. If you like our apple trees, learn a lesson from those who tend them.

Family Rambling

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:46:00 EDT

We celebrated Mom's 90th birthday this weekend. My brother Mike and I talked about getting older, about politics, about religion--all the things you aren't ever supposed to discuss in polite company. The fellow who made up the rule about never discussing politics and religion must have had a sizeable investment in the status quo. Has it ever occurred to anyone else that the people who have political and ecclesiastical authority in this country are quite happy that we all keep our family conversations as superficial as possible?

Superficial family conversations make for superficial leadership. We get the sort of public policy, and the sort of theology, that reflects the shallowness, or the depth, of our dinner table conversations. It's easy, in other words, to hood-wink a nation full of people who keep it light, and casual, and breezy.

By the way, Mike and I had a very civil conversation, since we're both deep thinkers. (And since we share Bea Riley's Constitutional Education.) I also learned a few things I never knew about my brother. For instance, once, on a family vacation, Mike knocked on the door of a polygamous home in Colorado somewhere and succeeded in getting the entire clan to take a picture with his kids. Mike has my mother's gift of immediate friendship with people. He could get a picture of the Pope, and I'm quite sure the Holy Father would walk away thinking, "where do we know that fellow?" I also learned that Mike, when he worked for Disneyland as a teenager, played cards with Mickey Mouse and Goofy--or maybe Pluto.

This was the lightest part of the conversation. I promise. We talked about politics and religion the rest of the time.

I have begun editing our film/television project in earnest, and I discovered whilst working on the titles an unexpected surprise from Windows. Bickham Script Pro! Joy unspeakable! "Bickham" is a historic font, people. George Bickham wrote a book in 1722, I believe, showing young clerks how to write round hand and Old English. Here's an example of the Windows version of his pen:

You can't fool me, Mr. Bill Gates. You fashioned this font just for Riley's Farm and you installed it during one of your nightly unannounced updates. I owe you a five pound apple pie. You can collect anytime, so long as you mention the words "Riley's Farm" in three or four of your next appearances.

Bill, by the way, we need to discuss politics.

Towards a More Manly Weight Watchers™

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 15:46:00 EDT

Towards a More Manly Weight Watchers™

Okay, so I can't eat Salmagundi all day long, so this morning I tried a little fresh apple oatmeal, which was okay, with the raisins and all, (and-okay! okay!--the three sausage links.)

Still, even with the sausage, it felt rationed. I knew I couldn't have all three, so I gave one to the dog, who, frankly, didn't seem appreciative enough. I had to say, "Bess. The sausage is right in front of your nose. Eat it. I can't eat it. Do you understand what I'm doing for you?"

And then I fell to thinking: why do they always have a little Weight-Watcher's portion of the menu with stuff that real men don't really like? Why not just give us the straight point-scoop on the Chicken & Cheese Alfredo or the twelve layer Lasagne? I mean if you go out to a restaurant after a week of shaved carrot sticks and granola, are you really going to spend your "Weekly Remaining" point total on an extra ration of onion soup and a scoop of fat-reduced Vanilla?

What's more, would you really visit a Colonial Public House, and drive all the way from El Segundo to have "corn pudding lite" or "Mount Vernon Reduced Fat Meat Pie?"

I asked Krystle to make a garden omelet with the quantities she would use if she were my normal pigging-out self. I wanted to see what that would do to my daily point total.

She handed me the ingredient list:

2 Ounces Cheddar Cheese
1 Oz. Green Onion
3 Oz. Eggs
2 Oz. Tomatoes
1 Oz. Bell Pepper
1 Oz. Onion

By my reckoning, that's 10 points. A Riley's Farm Colonial Public House Garden Omelet is 10 points! And Melania made the omelet just the way I like it--well done, with golden chewy cheese all over the top and stiff scrambled egg batter. (I know some people have to have their eggs soft; I like mine hard. It goes back to childhood, when slithery, slippery stuff like Swiss Chard made me gag.)

Am I on to something here? In a restaurant, wouldn't you really prefer to employ the Patrick Henry philosophy? "For my own part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I prefer to know the truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it."

I think so! Watch out bakery girls. Get out your food s

The Enduring Image

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:20:00 EDT

I found this photograph in an antique store near the Mission Inn last Christmas and picked it up for $3.00. Somehow it wound up taped to a file cabinet in Jan's office, and I decided to blog about it this morning, since it fits our latest project.

My instincts were to coin a caption--something like, "Our Customer Service Department," or "The Four Edwardians--A Serious Sports Bar," or "No One Parties Like the Baumgartner Sisters."

I suppose that instinct comes from the sense that life, for better or worse, has become considerably more casual since this photograph was taken. (Mary guesses 1905.) The high collars, the choker ties, the pleats, the pearl button fronts, the ridge-shoulders, the tight, neat sweep of the hair--it all announces a kind of order, and grace, we just don't see anymore. These young women took the occasion seriously. You wonder why number four was picked to stare at us, why number three is so sad. Does that ribbon around number two holds a locket, with a picture of her intended, or was she just the most responsible of the four, and thus entrusted with the key to the dry goods mercantile where they all worked?

It is a mystery photo. There is no clue on the back, except that it was once glued to a black paper scrapbook. Were these girls native Southern Californians-orange blossom gentry-or was this brought out West by a World War II vet, who died without grandchildren? Who could possibly sell a picture like this anyway? Wasn't there someone around to say, "Frank! That is your grand-aunt Polly-Jean! Glue that all back together! How much of this stuff have you been swap-meeting anyway?"

I suppose the real question is: would you want to leave so beautiful but cryptic a memory?

No! Of course not!

In Defense of Salmagundi

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:12:00 EDT

Two confessions: I don't like weighing myself and I do not like taking my blood pressure. If I can find some other plausible use of my time, I will call a Flash CS3 web-ad more important and leave the life vitals to some other day in the murky future. There's something about feeling your pulse pumping back at you, through the cuff, that just makes me shudder. The Rileys have high blood pressure. It's a family thing. The only way to fight it, short of channel-blockers, and ace-inhibitors and gout-aggravating diuretics is to lose weight, and horror of horrors, I weighed myself this morning. TWO HUNDRED FORTY SEVEN POINT ONE pounds. No wonder the stinkin' Wahmaker cowboy pants don't fit anymore! That's ten pounds more than my usual weight and TWENTY POUNDS more than my Weight-Watchers™ flirtation-weight about a year ago.

Well, I had the kitchen staff make me a light salmagundi this morning--lettuce, one ounce of light turkey, a half ounce of ranch dressing, two ounces of pickled beets, a half ounce of sweet corn niblets, three ounces of lettuce, and a slice of tomato. By my count, that's 3 of my 35 daily Weight-Watchers™ points. I could eat ten of these things a day, and they taste great, more filling. (I like the filling part.)

Well, I won't put these on the menu, but you CAN order them. It's a special for farm journal readers. You have to order the "Jim Riley is Getting FAT Salmagundi." You have to say it just like that, and then the waitress will have to go in and weigh the quantities for you. $5.49. You have to remember the price and be honest.

Let's get svelte together, people.

Unless, of course, you want to use our place as the once-a-week 35 point binge-release. I have no objections there, either.

Friends and Cormorants

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:55:00 EDT

One of our Many GREAT guests writes...
"..I was part of the Cameron Elementary School field trip to Riley's Farm on Monday, November 10, 2008. I think I had more fun than the kids, and they had a LOT of fun! I'm looking froward to coming back in the future and bringing my family. There is definitely something special about Riley's Farm! Thank you so much.."

Tara, Barstow

Friends & Cormorants

We got hammered yesterday by a Veteran's Day crowd that filled the tavern, the store, and the orchards. (We still do have u-pick apples for those willing to look for them.) I heard Brandon Ryder on the radio calling Jeff Hammond to help with serving food, and I knew there must be a big crowd waiting for a meal. Mary went down to help short order cook; I helped bus dishes. Lizzy watched Michelle's kids so that she could stay on and waitress, and we were packed-busy right till closing time at 4:00 PM. Usually, when the owner gets involved, something gets messed up, and, sure enough, I seated a party out of line.

The party who had to wait was not happy, and I had just chastised a Denny's manager the other day for seating parties out of order, so it was my turn to eat humble pie. I talked to the offended guest, and after her meal, we actually became pretty good friends. I gave her party one free lunch, and I confessed to her my error, even letting her know how hard I had been on the Denny's manager, and she said, "you have a conscience! I will be back. I will bring my friends back!"

Customer service is a delicate art. From our side of the counter, I've found that if we really make a mistake, it's better to own up to the problem right away, and try to make up for it. Reasonable people will understand an error, particularly if you don't run from it with excuses. Some regular customers reminded me yesterday they had been waiting for their soup; I ran back to the kitchen, and sure enough, the waitress had left a half-order unfilled. I made up for it right away--and I apologized.

There are some customers, however, who will not be happy, even if you tie their shoes and offer to send their kids to college. I usually give someone one or two chances to prove they are a reasonable guest, and if they don't respond, then, if they are lucky, I ignore them. The really unreasonable guest gets a list of other Oak Glen establishments where they would be welcome. (Sorry, fellow merchants.) If they are really rude, or crop-lifters, they get something like a sermon, while we wait for the deputy to arrive. Most Rileys, on both sides of the feud, have this ability to extend pastoral advice and homiletic stripes to wayward guests. It's a kind of service to the 99.99% of our guests who expect rural felicity and kingdom-style civility. A few weeks ago, a guest family launched into the orchard with their own bag, stealing apples. When our operations manager confronted the two, he was called "the Devil" by the eldest son. When I arrived, I told the apple-stealing matriarch of the clan, "your son has an unruly temper. He probably needs to kept in a pen somewhere, away from civilized people."

Well, that's not exactly corporate public relations love-speak, and they would fire me for that kind of talk if I worked at McDonald's, but I don't work at McDonald's. I think when people "go over the river and through the woods to grand mother's house," they expect the tranquility of the old world, but also its discipline. Polite, reasonable people are greeted with love. Rude, hateful, self-hating curmudgeonly cormorants are encouraged to migrate.

More of the Farm Journal -- November 11, 2008

Mr. Guppy and Other News..

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:34:00 EDT

Lisa Mertins wrote/sketched a charming chronicle of the Big Band Dance yesterday. Lisa is a Cherry Valley resident, and chicken and shoe guru, who has been covering the farm for the Orange County Register for years, and I sat her next to Jeff & Krystle Hammond for dinner. It's one thing to get newspaper/magazine coverage, but it's quite another to be painted right into immortality. Thanks, Mona Lisa!

On Sunday, a huge plume of smoke started rising from about a half-mile up Oak Glen road. It was deep black at first, and barreling into the sky at panic speed. "Car fire," I said immediately, and thanked the Almighty it was happening on a cold, sleety day. The fire department got there very quickly, even past the crowded Sunday Oak Glen traffic, and the black smoke turned white. I got to thinking about the last car fire I can remember here, and then remembered it took place at just about the same spot. I shared my theory with Scott that when a car is prone to heating up, the physics of the matter are remarkably consistent. They happen just shy of the Oak Glen fire station. "Yeah," Scott said, "that's about where Bob B--- had a car fire years ago." Note to drivers: Oak Glen is not exactly mountain driving in the way of Lake Arrowhead, but there are prolonged grades. Drive the new car, if you can, or pack a few extra fire-extinguishers.

I give two hearty thumbs up to the 2005 Masterpiece Theater version of Charles Dickens' "Bleak House." I liked the production so much, I even sleuthed out the name of the guy who played "Mr. Guppy" - Burn Gorman. He plays a hilariously credible version of an aspiring legal clerk, complete with obsequious bows, and rehearsed speeches, and a thin-lipped, sliver of a mouth that looks like it was painted by Dickens' very muse. Gillian Anderson, as Lady Dedlock, is introduced in such an unsympathetic light, that her confession, mid-plot, seems nothing short of baptismal. You weep for--and with--her. The heroine, Esther Summerson, holds the hand of a dying boy and says the Lord's Prayer with him in a way that speaks of an age that was Christian in more than name. I mean really: how can you not like a a story with surnames like 'Skimpole,' 'Tulkinghorne,' and 'Rouncewell?' Rent it!

Dream Reels

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:50:00 EDT

I usually photo-chronicle the Big Band Dances fairly extensively, but last night I dreamt my way through the evening, doing my happy-as-an-idiot impression.

We met Uncle Louis and Aunt Gina of the Drazin family extended clan. Uncle Louis was a paratrooper in World War II, and his wife, Gina, was part of a big Italian clan of girls from Glencoe, Illinois. (They danced to Bennie Goodman when they were courting.) Uncle Louis still plays basketball with the Drazin grandkids--at 83. The Crow Family brought two World War II pilots along with them, one who piloted a C-47 and another who piloted a B-29. Bill Blanchard of the Little Big Band turned seventy-five and he had five generations of his family with him, including his 99 year old mother and a great grandson who was not yet one year old.

The Riley kids, and their friends, were a kick in the pants, even if I say so as a papa. Haley Kaiser, a friend of Mallory's, got all the boys and girls dolled up on the hair front, 40s style. (The girls and their friends, yesterday, were literally walking around with their hair tied up in rags, until an hour before the dance started, and then they disappeared into the beauty-girls bedroom to emerge fashionably late for the dance, looking like MGM ingénues.) During the 1940s costume contest, I was struck by the fact that nearly all the participants were under twenty-five, including eight year old Gabriel, who timed the swinging of his watch-chain to maximize applause. There is no competing with an eight year old in a Fedora hat. The swinging watch chain nearly undid his mother, and Mary is not an easy mark. I still chuckle when I think about. "Who taught him that?" I asked Mary. "He saw it in a movie," she said.

And life was about as simple as a movie last night, without the conflict. Last night was the laughter scene.

The Marriage of Good Ideas

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:33:00 EDT

Even though I was a fairly old guy when I got married (28), I have come to believe young marriage is a good idea. Let's face it. Very few of us have the gift of celibacy. I remember the years between 18 and 28 as being a kind of gauntlet of broken hearts and intense emotional restlessness, even despair. I even remember the last "date" I was cursed to endure, before deciding I would begin looking for a wife. I had dated the woman three times, and it suddenly occured to me she had spent every one of those evenings talking about shoes. The shoes she had purchased. The shoes she was about to purchase. The shoes she had ruled out entirely. Open toed shoes. High heeled shoes. Italian shoes. I didn't even hear the details. It was like rain. She was a one woman thunderstorm of shoes, pitter-pattering down through every conversation from salad to dessert.

I remember snapping out of my trance and thinking to myself, "no woman can be good looking enough to endure a conversation like this for the rest of my life."

The point here is that dating--the sorry substitute for marriage--is an agreement to endure, perpetually, the same silly, superficial rituals of introduction. Someone will usually care about the other person more than the other, and so, it usually means someone is going to get hurt, and someone else is going to feel guilty for hurting them. Even if there is mutual attraction, an after-glow at each parting, people who are programmed to date mistake that "glow" for love. When the glow disappears, people think that love has disappeared. The post-Christian world has it wrong though. Love isn't a feeling. It's a decision. You make an intelligent decision, in your head, not your heart, to love someone who deserves your love. You have to say to yourself, "in good times and in bad times, will I really be able to love this person?" The shoe girl would have been very hard for me to love. It would have taken a special annointing from the Almighty to love the shoe girl. I made a very intelligent decision that Mary would be easy to love--and she was--but it was a decision. Dating just lets you put off that decision. It keeps you at the superficial, tormented, lonely stage, where no intentions are stated and so no intentions can be fulfilled. For the modern male, frankly, dating is a selfish romp. For most women, emotionally, it is a cruel roller-coaster.

Well, when we tell young people to put off marriage, we consign them to this insanity, until--presto--we consider them emotionally mature enough to get married. But dating, along the way, inevitably makes them more selfish, more choosey, more aware of what it likes to fail in a relationship.

When my daughter met a man we considered a good life choice for her, we didn't hesitate giving our blessing, even though she is eighteen years old. The groom is a good match, emotionally, spiritually, and intellectually. He comes from a good family. The two of them are capable of making a decision to love each other because they are good friends. It just makes sense to get started in life. There is really nothing you can't do married, that you can't do un-married, except, I guess, fool around.

But there is a modern prejudice against marriage. There is less stigma in a woman having a baby out of wedlock than in announcing a young marriage. There is less stigma in sending your daughter off to college to be debauched, potentially, by frat boys and turned into a Marxist by her professors than there is in announcing a teenage marriage. There is less stigma in a pair of randy teenagers lip-locking each other on the couch, without any talk of covenant, than there is in the same teenagers deciding they are going to make it permanent. We have it writ-large in our conscience that a youthful marriage is necessarily a rash thing, but there is more stupidity in serial dating than there is in deciding you are ready to begin your adult life...

..by getting married!

A Jimmy Carter Kind of Morning

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:31:00 EDT

Years ago, during the Michael Dukakis run for the presidency, I remember a kind of pre-election jamboree on a Greek Island that was receiving a lot of American television coverage. The crowd of Greeks was yelling "Dukakis," in anticipation of a presidential victory. Of course, that didn't happen, but I can remember thinking, "how does anyone become so tribal? How does race, or ethnicity, triumph over ideas?" I have a lot of sympathy for Greeks, in this case, since I married one, but voting for someone because of a shared demographic seems like the exact opposite of what Martin Luther King was fighting for. We are supposed to judge each other according to the "content of our character," and not "the color of our skin."

I can understand the tribal thing when it comes to rooting for sports teams, but that's just a past-time. If the Raiders lose, you might be depressed on Tuesday morning, but it doesn't mean you turn over the oval office to a Bronco fan the next morning. Tribalism is for family game night and office betting pools and sports bars--not elections.

So I would have to say I'm disappointed with America this morning, as yesterday's election seems like a triumph of cheap symbols and cheaper ideas. In one sense, you could say yesterday's results were a triumph for continued racism, even as the "historic" nature of the occasion is being lauded, from one old media desk to the next. Like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama merely enters the office in partial response to the mismanagement of the previous administration. He comes on the heels of a Bush Administration that talked about fiscal responsibility and committed the country to a ruinous spending spree. George Bush talked about fighting the war on terror, but then didn't miss an opportunity for a photo-op with the world's greatest terrorist organization--the Saudi Royal family. The electorate sensed the double standard--and took a different course.

Unfortunately, like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama is more hype than substance. He shares the intellectual's belief in reason, in discussion, without the depth of understanding necessary to guide that discussion towards meaningful conclusions. He combines that shallowness with an inflexibility, a hard-left orthodoxy that will ultimately make it difficult for him to govern. On abortion, the 47% of liberal Californians who voted for Proposition 4 yesterday simply won't disappear because Obama has made a pledge "not to yield" to Planned Parenthood. When the American people get to see a college radical attempting to govern, they are going to see very stark policy extremes, and those extremes will provoke a reaction--a future election that just may be about ideas, and not about cheap symbols. The American people, moreover, will not abide a phony. Barack Obama, for the benefit of Rick Warren's church, defined marriage as the union between a man and a woman, but then ridiculed Proposition 8 for putting that definition into law. This is nothing short of craven intellectual dishonesty and moral failure. It's just about as absurd as trying to fight international terrorists, Carter-style, by making a pledge to walk circles in the Rose Garden.

Eventually, there will be a Reagan waiting in the wings. Eventually, the Jimmy Carter morning will be over.

Election Day

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:46:00 EDT

Election Day

I'm no big fan of our political choices today, but I do hope America is wise enough not to trust Barack Obama with its future. The video on the right is only one instance of his horrendous lack of judgment. Thomas Sowell wrote yesterday what I've been thinking for some time. It's not just that Obama is a radical. He's a naive radical. He's more fitted for president of the student body than he is for President of the United States. Sowell, an African American, writes: "...The kind of self-righteous self-confidence that has become Obama's trademark is usually found in sophomores in Ivy League colleges — very bright and articulate students, utterly untempered by experience in the real world..."

Earlier in the year, Charlie Gibson chided Obama for making some fundamental foreign policy gaffes, with respect to Israel. "Rookie mistake?" Charlie asked. Obama bristled. He insisted that even a "veteran" could make the same mistake. The reality with Obama, is that he suffers from the " bright-young-man syndrome." An idea is expressed, articulately, with all the right motivations, with soothing tones for all the right constituencies. It is shot down by real world considerations, and then the bright-young-man re-processes events to express "what he really meant." He's never really wrong--just misunderstood. How could he be wrong? He went to Harvard.

The facts are fairly clear. Obama started his political career in William Ayer's living room. When John McCain reminded him of that fact in the third debate, he denied it. The facts simply had to be re-processed because when Obama started his career he wasn't thinking "William Ayers, terrorist." He was thinking, "William Ayers, distinguished professor." The bright young man didn't think it through. When confronted with what he had done, he had to re-process it somehow, because, after all, he was Barack Obama--a bright young man. Bright young men never really get it wrong. You just misunderstood him the first time. You didn't know what he really meant.

The problem is: neither does he. He doesn't really know what he thinks in the real world except that, eventually, he'll be proven right. He went to Harvard after all. He's a bright young man.

It is true that I think Obama's economic agenda is wrong-headed, that it will ignore the lessons of history and fuel poverty. It is true that I don't believe you can negotiate with international terrorists who want us dead. It is true that I am very nervous about electing someone who attended a racist church for twenty years. It is true that I think Obama will be the most shamelessly pro-abortion candidate in this country's history, and for a black man to service the racist agenda of Planned Parenthood is a tragedy beyond words.

But I am more nervous about his pride. You can learn from your mistakes if you throttle your pride, but if you can't, then I have one warning for America: The presidency is not a mid-term examination.

The Fenians, Apples

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:25:00 EDT

Fenians, Apples

Around here we tend to compare every Saturday, in sales, to the same Saturday the year before, and we had a whopping 3 fold increase, so people must still be thinking about Oak Glen. We're happy to report we still have some apples to pick. You are not too late for the harvest.

We strolled down to the Edward Dean Museum yesterday to hear the Fenians. No matter what's happening in life, I find that a good Irish rebel song puts the war back in your bones, and I get a kick out of what good businessmen these guys are. They set up the Fenians gift shop right outside the door, and they announced the Irish world cruise, and they've actually put out five CDs and a DVD.

Entrepreneurial Spirit! That's what America needs. A nation of shopkeepers and farmers and tin whistle players for profit! We're getting soft and girlish as a country--asking for handouts and dishing out warmed over New Deal platitudes to an electorate with too many brats screaming for a free lunch. Obama's revealed intention to bankrupt the coal industry is exactly the sort of thing I would expect from a guy who never once had to prove himself in the private sector.

A new Constitutional Requirement: all candidates for national office must run a successful regional Irish band for five years, feeding their family on nothing but gig fees and band t-shirt sales.

Too narrow? Let's go back to foundational principles. Let's take all salary and pension away from those who serve in Congress. Let's make it the volunteer national service of people who have actually done something succesful somewhere else!

November Harvest Update

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:41:00 EDT

We should be scouring off the last of the apples today and clearing the pumpkin fields. We'll have lots of music and good food too.

Some of you might want to know what living historians wear when they want to look a little more contemporary. Well, we now have really neat Riley's Farm hooded, zipper-front sweat-shirts in stock, with red, black, green, and ash-white colors. Suppose you're carrying a cartouche box, wearing knee-length gaiters, cross-belts, and sporting a three corner hat, and you need to stop by Stater Brothers for some Roman Meal bread. Suppose you're wearing a mob cap, petticoat, buckled shoes, and apron, and you need to stop by Costco for a party-pack of fresh croissants. You might want something to make the whole ensemble a little more casual. These contemporary sweatshirts, as you can see, make you fit right in, and they proudly display the Riley's Farm logo for all to see, letting everyone know you are really an apple farmer at heart. It may just be me, but I think they would make excellent Christmas presents for the u-pick and history fans in your family. Brandon will get these posted on the Riley's Farm on line store this week!

October 31, 2008 5:53 PM

That Scary Time of Year

Well it's that frightening time of year again, when every sort of witch and wizard and hobgoblin comes out of the woodwork and tries to get in your face, demanding tricks or treats. I've never seen so many strange costumes, so many warted noses, so much deathly white face paint. I've certainly never heard so many agitated stories of distress and lamentation.

I'm not talking about Haloween by the way. I'm talking about the election season.

The American Sidewalk Demonstration

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 12:27:00 EDT

Yesterday and the day before, I spent the late afternoons out on a street corner holding up a Proposition 8 sign with about 150-200 other demonstrators. On Thursday night, I took two of my teenagers, and last night, the whole family was holding up signs. I have to say the overwhelming majority of those who express a political opinion, among the drivers, was a positive thumbs up. The truckers blared their air horns, the mini-van families gave us smiles of approval, and I couldn't tell for sure, but it looked like two deputies were nodding approval in their squad car.

My eleven year old, however, standing next to my twelve year old, with their Uncle Scott on the other side of the intersection saw something he couldn't quite explain. A car with three drivers in their early twenties, drove by them and shouted. I couldn't hear it, but Lockton reported a few minutes later:

"That green car drove by and two of them shouted, F- Off you little kids! No on 8!"

Almost everyone, mind you, was extremely supportive of the cause, but the opposition provided the drama, of course. One woman, rolled down her window and gave me a scowl that would have peeled the heat shields from the space shuttle.

I shouted, "We love you."

This stopped her in her tracks, and then she looked about ready to yell something again.

"We love you," I interrupted.

This deepened the scowl, and the light turned, and she was off into angry land, where her love and tolerance are, no doubt, a source of great comfort for everyone in her circle.

There's another type though that I find even more contemptuous. One lady pulled extremely close to the sidewalk, where all the children were, and leaned over from the driver's side and said, very sanctimoniously, "If you caused an accident would that make you happy?" I couldn't quite tell if she was political or just a safety-hypocrite. (She actually stopped her car on the corner, subjecting it to oncoming traffic, as she extended her cautionary advice.)

"Dictators make the road safe, lady; this is the first amendment at work," I said. "You twit."

No I didn't say that. I thought it. With the exception of the skanky teenagers whose political discourse arrives courtesy of MTV and the local community college instructor-genii, I prefer people who are at least passionate about their cause, over the eyes-forward-head-down-don't-ask-me-about-politics crowd.

I told my brother, in the final analysis, a protest is much better than Church. You feel in the swim of things. You feel as though you are tending the garden. The protest was mostly LDS, but there were a few off-the-grid Evangelicals like me, and some Catholics as well.

Church People! Jesus wants you to occupy until He comes. Be salty!! A few years ago in, Sweden, the gay lobby succeeded in pursuing a pastor for "hate crimes" merely for quoting the New Testament. If you want to feel safe in your pulpits, you better get out on the street.

Harvest Update

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 12:24:00 EDT

Harvest Update

This is the latest season I can remember in sometime. Usually we have so many guests, we get picked out by the 2nd weekend in October. This year, we had more guests than last year, AND we still have some apples on the tree for this Saturday. (Keep in mind, if we get an apple picking rush tomorrow, or this afternoon that could change.) We have Granny Smiths left, and you can pole-pick in any of our orchards for the tree-top remainder on the other varieties.

This Saturday, the Bost Family will be playing in the Packing Shed and we will have House & von Arx in the Colonial Public house. You can press cider, pick apples, pick pumpkins, ride the hay ride, and enjoy two great places to eat!

Grandma Riley turns ninety this month. That's a picture of her on the right, in, (I'm guessing) about 1940. Mom spent most of World War II in San Francisco, where she met and married our dad, who was stationed there as a sailor. Her maiden name was "Winsor," and she traces our ancestory back to Joshua Winsor, who arrived in 1635, and married the daughter of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island. Mom always had a strong sense of heritage, and she was telling us stories about our Revolutionary War ancestors when were little tykes. The American "Winsors" dropped the "D" upon arrival in the New World, and, in the old country they were related to Baron de Windsor, contemporary of William the Conqueror (1066 and all that). Although we must be distant cousins, we are sad to report that we never hear from Prince William or Prince Harry or Prince Charles or any of that branch of the family. Even Queen Elizabeth never calls or writes, and I consider the queen to be the most gracious membef of the family.

Other than Mom, of course.

Even Without The Headlines..

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:25:00 EDT

Even Without the Headlines..

News in the 18th century was just as sensational, and maybe more, than news today.

Consider our first reproduced version of the New Hampshire Gazette. The stories for January 30, 1767 include:

Lightning Strikes the Frigate Modeste
��Captain implores Providence against cannibalism and the Sea

The Murder Trial of Robert Seamor
��Witnesses claim he "would destroy any Indian that came his way"

The Folly of Astrology
��A Reader ridicules the "influence" of the planets

No Fiddling Around the Fiddle
��A Feuding couple separated by a violin case

A Profane Oath His Last
��Angry Husband Struck Down by his own Curse

Nine Dead from Jail Fever
��Convict Ship spreads disease, vice

The Drunken, Complaining Middle
��Crying Poverty, the Poor buy �Two Hundred Tons of Hard Drink

Gold-Digger Dies Unlamented
�� Teresia Phillips consumes husbands, fortunes, and dies without friends

The news, I guess, has always been a bit sensational. (That's what makes it news). Newspapers of the 1760s and 1770s, however, didn't have headlines, or even captions, because with the exception of a few bold advertisers here and there, they really didn't even have illustrations.

With only four pages of print, there were no sections (National, Local, Opinion, Humor, etc.), but the news itself seems to be a mix of fact, editorial, and even sermon here and there. Colonial American newspapers didn't really have what you would call "reporters." (one of the many reasons why Tim Burton's psychotic Sleepy Hollow didn't exactly make it for me; it was full of modernisms, including a hunting scope on a musket.) The newspapers of the era had correspondents--travelers who wrote letters for the publishers to print. Perhaps for that reason, there is something refreshing about the vigorously partisan perspective of the colonial writers. They aren't paid, "professional" journalists, making a charade of a neutrality they never achieve. They are just people, folks, telling the truth as they see it.

It's entertaining stuff--even without headlines!

Franklin Press CS3

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 12:26:00 EDT

I spent the better part of yesterday transcribing the January 30, 1767 edition of the New Hampshire Gazette--four pages of very small type on approximately 11" x 17" paper. I'm a pretty fast typist too, probably in the 60-70 wpm range. (I got all the copy in; Jeff Hammond and Brandon Ryder will have to get the microfilm gray scale images into shape.)

Our plan is to offer authentic (looking at least) Colonial Newspapers for sale to our "publick house" guests. Someday, our friend Dan Shippey is going to have an 18th century Franklin press built, but for now, we will have to achieve this effect digitally. If we sell even one newspaper, we will be increasing circulation and inspiring the envy of the Los Angeles Times, which is losing hard copy circulation--like all the other newspapers in the country. The internet is a wonderful thing, but governments like China, helped by their friends in the progressive corporate world, are pretty good at shutting down any web site they don't like. (Everyone should stock up on the old mimeograph machines, if you don't want to build a Franklin Press. Tyrants can't stand a free press.)

Very early on in re-enacting, I found that learning from history was a very dangerous thing. This would sound counter intuitive, of course, but when you think about it, people don't like being reminded they are on the wrong track. In the Old Testament, the clear vision of the ancient prophets usually earned them a good stoning. John the Baptist got his head cut off for referencing the ancient law, and some Boston printers, prior to the American Revolution, were threatened by the British military--merely for reprinting the English bill of Rights. Quoting history can get you killed.

From the New Hampshire Gazette of January 30, 1767. In the aftermath of a bread riot by a well fed rabble with enough money to buy both tea and beer, an English writer laments the destruction of private property. (With apologies to our Catholic friends; this appears to be a reference to some of the Holy Father's more unscrupulous servants.)
This supiness used in the case of the Farmers, and suffering them to be thus demolished, will reduce us to a condition as bad as the Italian States, under the dominions of the Pope, where the fairest territory in the world is permitted to lay uncultivated, because the Farmer knows that the Pope’s myrmidons will ransack his barns, ricks, and granaries, without asking questions, without paying for it, and without even leaving sufficient for bread for their families. This violence and devastation deter them from cultivating the lands in those parts; for they declare, they may as well die with idleness, as labor to be robbed and starved.

From the New Hampshire Gazette of January 30, 1767. In the aftermath of a bread riot by a well fed rabble with enough money to buy both tea and beer, an English writer laments the destruction of private property. (With apologies to our Catholic friends; this appears to be a reference to some of the Holy Father's more unscrupulous servants.)

This supiness used in the case of the Farmers, and suffering them to be thus demolished, will reduce us to a condition as bad as the Italian States, under the dominions of the Pope, where the fairest territory in the world is permitted to lay uncultivated, because the Farmer knows that the Pope’s myrmidons will ransack his barns, ricks, and granaries, without asking questions, without paying for it, and without even leaving sufficient for bread for their families. This violence and devastation deter them from cultivating the lands in those parts; for they declare, they may as well die with idleness, as labor to be robbed and starved.

Yesterday, I was lamenting Barack Obama's entrenched sympathy for wealth re-distribution schemes. In the 20th century, that's called socialism, and it's disastrous effect on the economy is well known. A miracle of the Reagan Revolution is that even hard-left liberals like Joe Biden shun the term socialist like the plague. They know, for the average voter, that means ration lines and waiting two years to get your gall bladder operation, so they have to pretend like the very accusation is a joke, but, really, the failure to respect private property is an ancient history lesson, at least as old as the Bible. Yesterday's colonial transcription (right) included an English paper's lament, in the wake of the crown's failure to protect farmers from a bread riot. Whether the means of productions (farms, factories, businesses) are destroyed by a rabble, or by the democratic process, the lessons of history--if we are willing to learn them--are clear. Barack Obama is a victim of his own shallow Harvard education: the government can get out of your way, so that you can earn a living, but the government cannot guarantee you a salary, or a pension, without stealing it from someone else. If you multiply that theft enough times, there won't be anything left to steal. If a band of thugs on the street demands your wallet, we call it a mugging. But if a politician, (surrounded by celebrities singing "Yes we Can"), votes you out of your living, I guess they call that "Change we can Believe in."

Of course, the Obama disciples will correct me. "It's only the top five percent who pay more." Even if we ignore the fact that crippling the top 5 percent will reduce jobs, reduce incentive for innovation, and reduce productivity, thus reducing well-being for the rest of us, what if we replaced that "top 5 percent" with another label? What if we said, "heah, it's only the Irish who pay more?" What if we said, "heah, it's only the Blacks who pay more?" Would stealing from one group ever be anything other than what it is, legalized theft?

I suppose a generation of Americans who can justify the killing of more than a million babies in the womb every year will never understand a moral argument, but you would hope they could at least understand history.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Pray, people, that Americans don't have to learn history the hard way.

It's not just Joe the Plumber, Obama Talks Like a Socialist

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:52:00 EDT

Look, I know what it's like to be excited about a candidate. I've seen the t-shirts. I've seen the kids singing. I've seen the tears in the audience. I think there is a lot of glowing hope getting wrapped up in Barack, and I do not discount the emotion. When a politician says something I want to hear, and appears to believe it passionately, I'm just as tempted as the next guy to join the parade and wave the banners. If someone is sold-out-for-Barack, it would be like trying to talk a Red Socks fan out of rooting for his team.

I'm talking to folks who are first and foremost Americans, not Democrats or Republicans, not liberals or conservatives. If you've read the farm journal for any length of time, you know I'm no fan of John McCain. (The other day Jerry Lewis, our local congressman, kept using the phrase "our two great parties." I kept thinking, "you mean the ones that created this mess, Jerry?") I'm old enough to know that party labels mean almost nothing. What I do know is history, and I can tell you that the fastest way to guarantee poverty, low wages, and widespread misery is to toy with private property, to flirt with socialism, to kill the economic engine that fuels our prosperity. My brother, Scott, makes the point that we've not only been flirting with socialism; we've been courting her for decades, and he's right, but the following radio interview with Barack Obama is startling, and frightening, in its candor. He wants to marry the beast. Listen:

Barack laments that the Constitution was only a "negative contract," that it promised government would not interfere with our liberty, but that it never promised "what the government must do on your behalf." Ponder that for a moment. Barack, unapologetically, wants the government to provide you "economic justice." He laments that the founding fathers didn't create a government responsible for providing your living for you. What that really means--since the government can only enlarge itself by taxing you--is that Barack means to spread the wealth around by crippling some, and addicting others.

Can we please take a page from history, folks? Socialism has failed all over the world. Even as the bands are playing and the children are crying tears of joy, the groundwork for ration lines and poverty is being prepared.

Turn off the music. Think. Pray. Then cast your vote.

A Season for Boldness

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:48:00 EDT

A friend of ours, when asked to put a "Yes on 8" yard sign on his front yard, assured us he was for Proposition 8 but he worried what his neighbors would do to him, if he announced his political opinion.

I've learned a few things being active on the Proposition 8 front.

Number One: the anti-proposition 8 people are as about as unprincipled and as mean-spirited a group of people as I have ever seen in politics--and I've seen some real wackos, believe me. We've had two signs torn down, boycott threats, and threats of physical violence, in addition to the standard "homophobic bigot" name-calling. Two of the gentle-spirited tolerance crowd saw a "Yes on 8" table near the packing shed, last week, and then let loose with a sort of lisping, hissy fit that sounded something like the wicked witch of the west melting--if the wicked witch had resorted to white-trash profanity, that is.

Number Two: these people, the anti-8 crowd--like the green-skinned creature above--are a very tiny, but loud, minority of the population. Hundreds of our guests were anxious for a bumper sticker, and many of them put it right on their shirts as they walked around the farm. One regional manager of a major national hotel could not stop congratulating us yesterday for our stand, and business has gone up, monumentally, since we endorsed Proposition 8. Americans are tolerant people, but they simply will not tolerate same-sex indoctrination in public schools--which is the inevitable consequence of making same-sex marriage constitutional. If the gay lobby had settled for being left alone, Americans are libertarian enough to have obliged them, but when they demand a moral endorsement of their lifestyle, right down to labeling anyone a bigot who disagrees with them, Americans recognize that for the sort of thought-crime-inquisition that it is.

Number Three: Americans will have to endure the endless tyranny of the fringe-minority if the sane middle-ground remains silent. Liberty cannot be protected by the timid. Justice is not found by those who are afraid to seek it. If you believe that children in kindergarten should not be subjected to same sex curriculum, you should put a "Yes on 8" sign on your front yard and defy anyone to question your right to speak. The more signs torn down by the opposition, the more the sane middle understands who is really tolerant, and who is having a tantrum. It may sound harsh, but it's a tad ridiculous praising the brave soldiers who died protecting our freedom, if you are too scared to paste a sticker on your car, or give the sermon--pastor--that you know you need to give. America is not a place for cowards. It the land of the free, and the home of the brave. Remember?

Recipe for America

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:42:00 EDT

As I write, the Dow Jones is whip-sawing up and down by 300 point multiples, the Asian markets were down by as much as 10% in one day, parts of America are digging out of hurricanes and wildfires, parents in Hayward, California learned that their five year olds were being subjected to same-sex indoctrination, some financial analysts are predicting 10-12% unemployment soon, ACORN has used our tax dollars for registering cartoon characters (and the dead) to vote in Ohio, and some police chiefs are worried about riots on election day--no matter what the outcome.

Academics--the tenured academy people who specialize in distancing themselves from the fray--tend to remind us that every generation, when facing a crisis, thinks better of those who preceded them. Calls to learn from the past are castigated as mere sentiment, nostalgia, romanticism. The sins of the past, both real and imagined, are trotted out, to keep us eternally eyes-forward. The modern age has even coined a phrase, in the midst of crisis, which is a kind of self-indictment: "we don't want any heroes, here, people."

But I think the heroic Patrick Henry had it right. "I have no way of judging the future, but by the past." Tenured professors get their pay checks, even when markets are crashing and moral failure envelops us, so it's hard to take advice from people who feel no pain. I think we can learn a lot from the past, and there is nothing at all wrong with even romanticizing it. How are we going to solve our problems, if we don't get a little excited about wearing the armor of heroism? You need legends to fight dragons--and we've got some major monsters on the horizon.

If I were to put it all in a recipe book, the ingredients for re-kindling the American spirit would have to include:

1. The Almighty. The Mayflower Compact begins with the words "In the name of God, Amen." One hundred and sixty seven years later, the United States Constitution concluded with the words, "In the Year of our Lord." The years between those dates were characterized by a law that reflected the wisdom of the Old and the New Testament. Even as late as 1830, atheists were not admitted as witnesses into New Hampshire courts, because they had nothing "to bind their conscience." Public high school students were studying the Bible in Texas in the 1940s and in California public schools, in the 1970s, Baptists, Catholics, Jewish and Mormon kids were singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," and "Joy to the World." (I know; I was there.) America, historically, has never been a theocracy, but it has been a culturally Christian nation.

2. Solid Preaching. The pulpits of America, with a few exceptions, are full of hirelings. We have outright demagogues like Jeremiah Wright, who preaches unapologetic racism and national self hatred. We also have "seeker-friendly" book-and-tape Christian entrepreneurs, name-it-and-claim-it charlatans, light-and-sound-show-gospel-dog-and-pony shows. Unfortunately, even small church ministries reflect some of the outlandishness of their larger brethren. If a church isn't preaching the law of God, if it isn't calling the flock to repentance, it really isn't a church. If the Marine Corp were run like the modern church, our soldiers would be overweight and limp-wristed and crying big goobery tears into their canteens. Church should change people for the better--make them more honest, more loving, more joyful, more accountable, more heroic, more articulate, more hard-working, more bold. If a church isn't changing you, it is fleecing you.

3. The Patriarchy. Ladies, if you don't let us lead, we'll drink beer and watch football and do just about anything to keep you from getting really angry with us. This is a family web site, so I won't go into what sort of power you have over us, but you know it's real. The problem is, if you use that power, in that way, you won't have a husband, and a leader. You'll have a tamed, whipped kitten. Sometimes women value peace so much, they won't let their husbands pick a fight--and sometimes, men need to pick a fight--to protect their families, and their nation. There's a reason why Sarah Palin is the only real man in this election. America has been getting too intimate with its feminine side.

4. Constancy. Divorce and sexual irresponsibility and abortion are rampant in America, and we keep pretending there are no victims, but the social service agencies keep getting bigger and bigger, to handle the zipper problems of the Bill Clinton generation. Let's get real: We need to start calling easy girls "sluts" again, and we need to pass laws that take a bull-whip to the boys who father babies and then drive girls to abortion clinics. (Real men marry women they impregnate. Sex has never been the problem. Irresponsible, selfish rut-whatever-walks has been.)

We need to outlaw abortion entirely and repent, before God, that we ever allowed such an outrage to blemish our land. In terms of numbers killed, it is a far, far worse national sin than even slavery. Take a look at the image Cardinal Egan of New York sent to his flock today--that of a twenty-week old child in the womb. How can we look at this life, and then fight for the right to kill it without losing our souls? America is too good, too decent, to abide Roe V. Wade.

5. Multiplication. For too long, America's "educated" middle class has been rationing reproduction, as though children were a matter of managed resources. The Baby boomers, very simply put, have not had enough children to care for them in their old age. Unless the western world wants to get utterly out-populated by that half of the world that wants to blow Israel, and the West, off the map--start having children, people. "Multiply and replenish" means "multiply and replenish." Get a job. Get a wife. Make babies. Tell the environmentalists to go comb the leg hairs on a gnat somewhere.

6. Hard Work. Americans are getting lazy. We treat the 40 hour work week and the 65 year old retirement and the 15 minute break as though they were brass idols in the temple of Morpheus. If you don't love work as much as breathing, you aren't alive. We need to start honoring, and stop belittling, fathers who work hard for their families.

7. Education. We need learning, and wisdom, that is real. Our schools have become indoctrination centers for popular causes and not centers of real learning. Our students are more likely to learn the "wisdom" of green policy and almost nothing about real-world economics. The only real instruction that is going on in our universities is technocratic learning. (There is simply no way to fake a scientific education.) Unfortunately, scientists are moral dimwits; they can study the physiological effects of a properly performed abortion, but they have no training in its spiritual or social dimension. We need to reintroduce the great books and put the western canon back on the throne. No Doctor should be allowed to practice without wrestling with the New Testament, and no physicist should be allowed to study critical mass without learning Paradise Lost.

8. Decentralization: big solutions are the big problems. If two-thirds of the federal government were dismantled, we would be better off. Banks have made disastrous loans, knowing that the feds will buy, or guarantee, them. Families are opting for needless medical procedures, knowing that a far-away insurance company will pay for them. We are dangerously banking on distant, giant, third parties to pay the tab.

Eight ingredients.

It's a start. I know what I have proposed sounds radical, but that's the problem. We are so far from our roots, we are so high up on a dead branch, we can't even recognize the truths that sustain us, and how far we will have to fall, to get back at the truth.

Chowder Song

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:15:00 EDT

I'm sipping our home-made corn chowder at this moment, and the warm balm of healing broth is sort of doing a float-away number on me. If you can't drink wine, for whatever reason, I recommend our corn chowder. The milk, and the celery and the chicken base and most of all the melting butter give the afternoon a kind of baked-bread over-brush. The whole world becomes a burnished oil painting in the English countryside, right down to the happy, healthy peasants, bringing in the barley.

If you try the corn chowder along with our fresh baked Sally Lunn bread, you might even hear the angels harmonizing (and hovering of course) over the strawberry fields.

I don't mean to wax so poetic about the place, but it just does that to you sometimes.

P.S. If you order the corn chowder in the tavern, make sure you tell your server, "I want it hot." I can't guarantee you will hear the same muses, if the bowl isn't steaming.

Your Tolerance is Scaring Me...

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:35:00 EDT

A warm, dry Tuesday, with lots of people in the public house. The "recession" has yet to reach us. Maybe we're just the benefactors of folks who would normally drive off to San Diego or Santa Barbara, but now content themselves with their gorgeous backyard--Oak Glen.

Mary and I made our Applebee's trip tonight; I stocked up on a one terabyte USB drive, so that I can back up my system and start editing our movie in earnest. Over dinner, we talked about perspective in life--how our perspective rules us, how half the battle lies in getting people to consider how their perspective may be crippling them.

The weirdest perspective of this political season, by far, is the vicious howling of the "tolerance" crowd. The other day, someone ripped down our "Yes on 8" banner, and, although our email runs heavily in favor of people who support traditional marriage, the anti-8 crowd tends to wax the most passionate in 1) declaring their surpassing love for all humanity and 2) labeling anyone who doesn't agree with them, "hateful, homophobic, narrow-minded bigots." Listening to one of these people is something like catching a schizophrenic transition between personalities. It's like watching Dr. Jekyl turning hairy under his cuff-links.

If the gun control lobby responded to second amendment activists this way, there would be no marshalling of statistics, no exchange of argument, just a swift sneer, and a little name-calling:

Pro-Gun: we are protecting the constitutional rights of Americans to own weapons.
Anti-Gun: --because you are a hate-filled tool of the gun lobby!
Pro-Gun: actually, we represent millions of Americans who are protecting their Constitutional rights.
Anti-Gun: --because you are narrow-minded bigot!

They say that conservatives are more tolerant teachers, and friends, and I am fast beginning to believe it is true. Conservatives tend to display that tolerance that comes from the security of knowing they are defending time-honored principles. They don't need ideological conformity, among their friends, because they tend to apply the patience they know will allow their errant friends time to correct their ways. (It's a bit like watching a foolish teenager argue the tide is not really coming in--even as a wave is breaking over his head. What's the point in arguing? The universe, the Almighty, will have the last laugh, anyway.) The left, on the other hand, isn't quite sure what it really believes, and it needs absolute conformity to soften the dissonance of its own confusion. The academy, and the media, are always hatching up some new pocket of the disenfranchised to champion. This year it's the trans-gendered and the sexually confused and the notion that an institution literally thousands of years old--marriage--simply must be restructured to accommodate every odd sexual whim that comes along. That isn't liberty. It isn't freedom. It's chaos. The lefty loons who weave these nutty tapestries of false tolerance aren't really defending the downtrodden, as much as they are throwing rocks at the establishment. In order to feel better about themselves, they find something to hate. God and country will usually do. The hatred of Sarah Palin this year isn't so much about Sarah Palin as the need to feel superior to Sarah Palin. The hatred, and the harassment, of pro-family advocates this year isn't about the issue at hand. It's about the need to feel more tolerant, more scientific, more hip, than Christians.

That's just an intellectual fashion show--without the clothing. Gays have more civil liberty protections than the rest of us, including civil unions, but they want the right to demonize, under color of law, anyone who expresses the slightest misgiving about their behavior. They want the legitimizing stamp of marriage as a silencer of pulpits and pundits and curriculum committees--as we have already seen in Canada and in Massachusetts. It is intellectually dishonest to claim this is about "gay marriage." It's about the ongoing, unqualified demand to enforce "gay group-think." At its heart, it is tyranny of the worst sort. When people find themselves on the side of this chaos, emotionally drawn to defend sophistry, there isn't much left to do but shout hate and destroy yard signs

Fall Saturday

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:55:00 EDT

It looks like we had a record-breaking third Saturday in October. The numbers aren't in completely, but I would be surprised if we didn't come very close to a 50% increase over the previous year. This time, during the fall of 2007, we had run out of u-pick apples, but we still have quite a few on the trees, so this figures to be one of those harvest seasons we will be able to continue picking into November. Praise be! I'd like to have some mellow, cider pressing Saturdays.

The crowds for both The Harvest Feast and Sleepy Hollow were incredible--full of farm regulars who have, happily, made the farm a tradition. Sometimes, when you get a big private company party, it's a little tough getting people up for a good time, since their boss paid for the trip. When individual families pay for the dinner, they are primed to have a good time, and you can feel the audience good will when you walk into the room. It makes all the difference.

My number one business quandary these days is how aggressive to be about the period from about December 15th through January 28th. I think that the word is beginning to spread about the colonial public house. The food has always been great, but we have servers who have restaurant experience now, and some of them look the very picture of 18th century tavern maids, but I'm not sure how many people will wend their way up here over the holidays, and into January, without something extra. We've tried 18th century drama, music, food, games, but it's getting the mix of all of them in the right proportions that seems to be the key. Running a business like ours is something like being an intuitive dinner party host. You need to know when the guests are making their own fun, and when to propose a parlor game.

Thinking....

I Love Cubans

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:00:00 EDT

I ran in to take a break from the apple-picking frenzy, long enough to read this email:

Dear sir:

We were greatly surprised to read this article from your journal . We happen to be a big family attending your event around Halloween for quite a few years now. Most of all Cubans by birth, AMERICAN CITIZENS BY HEART. We are a couple that came from Cuba in 1968 with two daughters born there and later on the third was born here. We have nine grandchildren (blessings), one married already and two sons in law (blessings also). We all go every year and enjoy this event to the max. We thank the Lord every day of our lives for the privilege, the opportunity and the blessing of living on the land of the free because of THE BRAVE. May our Almighty God be with you and our beautiful country Sincerely, Isabel

Someone who is better at youtube than I am, could probably find the clip of Ricky Ricardo on the Johnny Carson show, where Ricky talks about being an American. He is overcome with emotion, at the thought of what the United States had done for him, and if I remember correctly Johnny puts a hand on his back. It was memorable enough, I think, to have been included in the Best of Carson series.

Maybe it's just me, or this political season, but I like it when people are proud of their country, and thankful for it, and not just because they have a relative running for president.

Apples, Apples, and More Apples, and Pumpkins too, and Music...

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:05:00 EDT

Jeff Hammond reports that we will have the following varieties available to pick tomorrow: Antique Golden Delicious, Winesap, Arkansas Black, Jonathan, (very, very few), Glen Seedling, Braeburn, Ozark Gold, and Granny Smith. Remember: each apple beams up a GPS signal to a satellite that is connected to our Network Operating System in Houston, Texas, where Riley's Farm apple-inventory clerks are monitoring the availablity of each variety. This information is then beamed back real-time to every field hand on their Blackberries so that everyone in the orchards knows how much is left. (That's a joke, son.) Someone wrote me a nasty note yesterday, complaining that her variety was not available, and I tried to explain that we have no way of knowing how many guests will arrive for picking on any given day, so quantity predictions are difficult. Last year, our Granny Smith orchard was picked clean in about six hours, and we open that one up tomorrow, so...first come, first picked.

I had someone else tell me the farm is an oasis of peace. She was sipping her coffee under the grape arbor this morning, and she just volunteered it. It must be true. In this season of political bashing, world war, and economic finger-pointing, Riley's Farm is an oasis--a sanctuary. I think so too. If I had to watch the current political carnage from, say, an apartment in Manhatten, it would drive me crazy, so God must have me in the right place.

But of Course. He doesn't make mistakes.

The Carnival of the Unbelieving

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:41:00 EDT

I know many of you will be shocked by today's news--hard to believe--that Madonna is getting divorced. After at least two marriages and a string of relationships, she should be, like Brad Pitt, an excellent spokesperson for the No on 8 campaign. According to the Sun report, "It’s very sad. They were a great couple and brilliant parents. They just couldn’t live together any more.”

Brilliant parents who just couldn't live together any more. Wow. That's deep, man. That must be something like "she was a brilliant gardner, who just didn't feel like watering the plants anymore."

Because of the political season, internet forums are chock-full of people who can't stand God. Let me be the first to acknowledge that some of God's earthly representatives are singularly poor ambassadors of heaven, but, as a student of history, I can't help thinking that the anti-God brigade has a very short term approach. Who would you prefer as your county commissioner, people? Billy Graham or Fidel Castro? Sarah Palin or Hugo Chavez? Who would you rather have passing out the post hurricane rations? Jerry Falwell or Pol Pot? Who would you rather have protecting freedom of the press? Jim Dobson or Mao Zedong?

If you think human society is dastardly with God, you should take a real historic look at what the world looks like without Him.

The anti-God squad has a problem, this year, with traditional sexual morality on the subject of gay marriage. On the surface, to the modern mind, sexual preference seems victimless. As I have written before, pre-AIDS, most of us were raised, and taught, that modern science had cured the problem of sexually transmitted disease. Shortly after our 1974 junior high lecture on syphilis, our school broke out with a new epithet--"Shanker Head." Sometimes, in a heated moment of teenage dismissal, someone was called a "spirochete." Behind the new additions to the lexicon, was a more subtle message: any problem with sex could just be solved by a trip to the doctor.

Unfortunately, in the post AIDs world, some problems with sex were followed by a trip to the cemetary. Some problems with sex were followed by a trip to an abortuary. Some problems with sex were followed by a teenage suicide. Sex education, devoid of the moral dimension, is something like giving teenagers free access to methamphetamines, and saying "be careful, kids."

What modern secularists can't bring themselves to admit is that God's ancient standard, the faithful marriage of man to woman, is the single best response to the hazards associated with promiscuity, heterosexual and homosexual. But monogamy alone will not solve all of those problems. You can't slap the word "marriage" on homosexual pairings and expect the hazards to go away. The political climate has become so rigid, we can no longer have discussions about the health problems associated with homosexuality, but they do exist, and even if it is politically correct to ignore them, parents can't allow their children to be subjected to what can only be called a state-sanctioned public-relations campaign on behalf of alternative sexual orientation.

The ancient standard, God's standard, has been to call certain acts of moral failure "abominations." Literally, billions of believing Christians, Jews, and Muslims follow that standard. God calls dishonesty in business an "abomination" as well. Secularists want honesty in consumer transactions, but they don't want God's standard applied to sexuality, because they believe science has bested God on this front.

News flash, Bill Maher fans who might be enduring a Herpes outbreak right now: God gets the last laugh.

Teaching the Goats to Bark

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:13:00 EDT

Proposition 8 is about more than just marriage. It's about allowing parents to raise their own children, with their own standards.

Imagine a fairly tolerant, libertarian world where traditional families, churches, and schools could teach their version of sexual morality to their children, and homosexuals and social progressives could teach their version of sexual responsibility in private or alternative schools. Perhaps the public schools could either just leave the subject alone, or make sure the subject was taught only with signed parental consent, and in a setting that included a range of beliefs on the subject.

Unfortunately, the gay lobby has created an environment of such vast intolerance for any perspective but their own, that this happy, and perhaps utopian, compromise, is becoming impossible. Once same-sex marriage is legalized, the pattern is very clear: social crusaders go to work, trying to make sure that every child, regardless of their spiritual tradition, receives a uniformly positive message about homosexuality. Here's the problem: that makes the vast majority of the faithful into thought criminals. Merely for taking a different moral perspective on the issue, you could end up in handcuffs. As the video above attests, David Parker of Lexington Massachusetts felt the full fury of the legal system merely for insisting that his child, as a six year old, not be exposed to same-sex curriculum.

Most reasonable people, on both sides of the issue, understand the totalitarian nature of such extremes, but there are precious few thinking progressives, and traditionalist Democrats, who will dare speak out against the gay lobby. Why? Very simply put, you are not free to "agree to disagree" with strident same-sex partisans and their allies. Most of the email we receive is supportive of Proposition 8, but there is a strand of what can only be called hateful, dim-witted group-think. George Orwell taught his unthinking sheep to bleet "two legs bad" in Animal Farm, but the modern gay-crusader only has to teach his unlettered followers to shout "hate." Perhaps the really bright students can throw in a "bigot" reference here and there, but, with one exception, I have yet to receive a thoughtful, respectful email from a"no on 8" correspondent.

Here's an example of anti-8 email, with a little family-friendly censorship:

Just googled your site to get directions to come visit today, and saw your link to YES ON PROP 8, IM NOW NOT COMING TO VISIT, OR SPENDING ANY OF MY GAY F&^*ING DOLLARS AT YOUR <anatomical reference>!!!!!!!!

There were also linking forums that threatened physical violence against us, threatening to stuff apples into body parts that...well..use your imagination. I would provide the link, but this is a family friendly site. I have saved the hard copies of the diatribe, in the event a police report

To be certain, not all anti-8 proponents are this vile, or this violent, but, frankly, I didn't receive one comment that wasn't intellectually lazy. To a person, they all assumed that anyone voting for traditional marriage protection was hateful, bigoted, and intolerant. This would be something like a debate opening with the words, "my opponent is a hopeless, scum-sucking piece of slime," and ending with the words, "I don't feel obligated to answer any of my opponents questions because he is a hopeless, scum-sucking piece of slime."

What sustains representative democracy? Dialogue, folks. Discussion. Even Argument. But you can't achieve informed public policy by turning the debate into a European soccer match, complete with drunken brawls and suffocated riot victims. Just this week, a pro Proposition 8 volunteer was rushed to the emergency room with serious injuries.

Is this the tolerance we expect to see from the tolerance crowd?

Most Likely to Seed

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:54:00 EDT

Thanks to all you farm guests who made Saturday what looks like a record attendance and revenue day. I spent a lot of time walking the farm to see if our guests were happy, and while I didn't get to talk to all of you, the ones I did gave me good reports. It's a real tribute to our staff that Mary and I were able to rush off to my 30 year high school reunion Saturday night and leave the farm operation to our children and capable staff. Thanks!

I also want to thank you for making our work here on the farm a source of uniform praise and keen interest at my reunion. Other Rileys have reported, upon returning from reunions, that old classmates--even the ones who are titans of industry--are intrigued with our pastoral lives up here. I was answering farm questions all night. I kept trying to tell them there's a lot of stress running a farm of this size, that it's not all just grape-stomping maidens and golden harvest sunsets, but a lot of them acted as though they wanted to trade places. Who would have thought? Most likely to seed?

Our reunion was held at the Santa Anita Turf Club, which has become one of the safer investing institutions in the past few weeks, and the track, after-hours, at sunset, looked like the grounds of a palace. The course was all raked and looking like deep brown, caramelized sugar. The turf was neat and wet and lollypop green. The grandstands had that gentrified splendor of Ascot, just prior to the arrival of the swells. Inside the Chandelier room, the staircases were draped with our school colors--red and gold-- and I was pleasantly surprised to see that I didn't need the nametag, with the graduation picture, to tell who many of my old friends were. Some of them actually looked pretty brand spanking new.

With one notable exception, I was pleased to observe that age, does indeed, bring about a kind of wisdom, or at least mellowness that I'm sure none of us really saw in high school. People seemed genuinely interested to see each other, and catch up, without the coy maneuvering of the clique generation. There were no jocks, or loadies, or band geeks, or pep squad girls--just people who shared youth with you. I was touched by it all; I wanted the party to go on until dawn. Alas, the wisdom of age got the better of me.

There was one weird moment. I think I encountered the first real mean drunk of my life. I've found that a glass of wine tends to bring out the better side of most people but this guy--an alum husband--hovered on the edge of a conversation I was having with a classmate who moved to Texas. I was heaping praise on the lone star state and Mr. MeanDrunk jumped in, leering at me with, "this guy is killing me. Texas! F-Texas. F-Arcadia. I went to high school hours from here!"

"Wow," a friend said, after a long difficult pause. "Hours? Are you sure it wasn't light years?"

Somehow, praise be to God, I maneuvered my way out of that conversation and back into the ranks of the sane and the merely nostalgic. It would have been very ugly watching this poor guy get beat up by Mary. In another two or three minutes, the Greek would have been spiking the guy with both her high heels.

For the most part, though, I was reveling in this comradery of mellowness, feeling pretty grand about not having to deal with cliques, and just enjoying everyone's good company, when the house lights went up and the alumni association started clearing the tables. The last of the reunion celebrants wandered out to the parking lot and Mary asked me if I had a good time.

"Yes!" I said. "It was fun. I didn't feel all self-conscious and nerdy like in high school. I actually felt like part of the group."

"Good," Mary said. "So we can just go back to the hotel? You don't want to go to this after hours part over at 100 to 1?"

"Party?" I asked. "What party?"

"Some of them are going over to that club afterwards. They didn't say anything to you?"

"No!"

The Calming Country

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 10:40:00 EDT

The Calming Country

Yesterday one of our redcoats, who was sitting out under the grape arbor and taking in the views of the strawberry fields and the mountain, said "you know I've worked here long enough that I get to feeling like this place is a kind of separated paradise; it's just a completely different world up here."

I'm not sure if I got it down word for word, but that was the general impression--and it's been my take for a long time too. All sorts of people find a kind of sanctuary here. There is a sense that Oak Glen, and Riley's Farm, represents a pocket of happiness, a little pond of emotional clarity, outside the fray.

Some of it has to do with the immensity of the mountains, and that feeling you get after you climb to the top of a hill. One person wrote yesterday that the upper pumpkin field views of the valley were breathtaking, and she backed it up with photographs. Against Wilshire Peak, the clouds roll through in a way that makes you feel as though you're floating in them--as though you have some say in the storm. In mountain country, you get the Olympian feeling that the weather originates here. There's a reason, in other words, why armies place their garrisons on the top of hills, and wise men give counsel on mountainsides. ("I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.")

There's another sort of clarity that comes about seeing the harvest. Everything we buy these days is shrink-wrapped and hard-packed in plastic to prevent theft. We see the end product, but we don't see it being produced. In our strawberry field, you see the whole thing--from blossom to berry to strawberry milkshake. It feels deceptively "Eden-like." It takes a lot of sweating brows to make it look like that, but a farm in full production is the closest we can get to the Garden, post-fall.

There's also a kind of relief that comes from giving voice to very old ideas. This is not to say that the past is without blemish, but all you have to do is take one look at an aging Madonna in concert, or Pierre Cardin's spring/summer line or the fatuous meandering of The View, to know that the world appears to be embracing a sickness of mind without even admitting it. That mind-disease, that moral gloom, is born of the reeking, post-Christian moral oxygen. The hard left wouldn't go beyond lamenting consumerism and abuse of the environment, but, really, the sickness is broader than that. It flows from the lie there is no God and that we can somehow achieve "peace" through sterile reason--Condi Rice or Jimmy Carter style. Up here, beyond the frock coats and the mob caps, the profile of our ancestors bespeaks an era when people were not afraid to call good "good" and evil "evil." Our ancestors didn't pretend that hardened criminals could be reformed. They executed them. Our ancestors didn't call cowardice, in the face of danger, Cindy Sheehan style, "moral courage." They ridiculed it. Our ancestors didn't make jokes about shop-lifting. They lashed thieves until they bled. Our ancestors didn't pretend the Barbary pirates were simply misunderstood freedom fighters; they knew they were brutal, raping thugs, and they treated them accordingly. Our ancestors didn't pretend that adultery or sexual sin was a victimless crime. They brought the full measure of the law against those who would destroy the family with their depravity.

We live in a moral fog, a soup of putrid, muddy neutrality. The past, if it is studied with eyes wide open, brings about the kind of clarity Moses must have felt, watching the light, burning the words into the stone. People can make the mistake of believing nature, or pastoral images, or hillsides bring peace; they can't. God, and His truth, bring the peace that goes beyond all understanding. Sometimes a city-slicker will wander into an country village and struggle with the sense of peace he feels. It doesn't come from the clothing, or the plows, or even the old-time music. It comes from watching an imperfect people know, and trust, there is a perfect God who is worthy of both their fear, and their love.

The Righteous Are Bold as a Lion--and about as Confident.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 12:15:00 EDT

Yesterday, I had the girls in the tavern make me up a turkey-salmagundi (lettuce greens, diced beets, corn niblets, slices of green pepper, with more than a touch of shredded turkey). I ordered the ranch dressing on the side, and then promptly poured every ounce of it over the concoction. I tend to be a "shovel-food" guy, so salads unnerve me. (Would Adrian Monk separate the elements of his salad?) I like uniformity in food--big bowls of buttered corn, piles of french fries, that sort of thing, but this Salmagundi was a cold, sweet dash of satisfaction. I'm mildly proud of our place. The colonial tavern girls are friendly, and they get the food out fast--at least on weekdays. On Saturdays, in Oak Glen, in October, we do our best too, but, as Mary was telling me, twenty minutes for food this good is worth the wait.

Jeff Hammond brought down a ripe "Seek No Further" apple, one of our heirloom varieties, and I gave it a try. It seemed slightly more complex than most of the modern varieties, with slightly softer flesh, but, honestly, in terms of memorable heirloom taste, the White Winter Pearmain, so far, has my money. Really, though, an apple right off the tree, of any variety, is going to be very enlightening for most of you, because you simply can't fake that freshness, even with climate control and rush-to-market technology. I learned that with the strawberries too. I've never tasted a strawberry, anywhere, like the ones we grow here.

We went birthday shopping for Mary last night, and, for Mallory and I, that can be a tension-filled experience. There's something about proposing present ideas to a teenager that can be very much like tentatively putting your finger tips into a Waring blender. To be fair, Mallory has high standards for her mother's birthday, since Mary thinks about birthday presents, for all of us, months, and months, and months in advance. When we were courting, I confided my weird, writerly obsession with reference books, and she presented me with field guides for my birthday. (Everyone has a little Frasier Crane in them.) How can you compete with that sort of thoughtfulness? You can't, especially if you have a near emotional duplicate in your daughter, who has thought about your idea, and rejected it twice, before you even propose it. The great thing about Mallory is that she never holds a grudge and she has a tender conscience. She always apologizes if she hurts my feelings, and then she gives me a big hug. She's a great kid. Whenever she runs the u-pick counter, by the way, sales go up.

At one store, a clerk confided that it has been dreadfully slow for the last two weeks. The kids and I were pondering economics, and I told them, ultimately, the future of the economy is a matter of confidence, but that confidence is more complicated than financial talking heads would have you believe. It's far more multi-dimensional than simply working up a rosy glow about the future of something as generic as "the economy." Really, when we are talking about economic "confidence," we are talking about a spiritual/moral assessment of everyone around us. We may not think overtly in these terms, but "confidence in my economy" is very close to "faith in my people." Will my fellow citizens do everything possible to pay their debts? Is our culture hard-working? Can I trust the ratings company to fairly evaluate the quality of an investment? Can I trust the body-politic not to engage in class warfare and nationalize assets? Will business leaders put personal integrity over private gain? Will the churches of America teach hard work, and vineyard-tending, or will they hunker down for the 2nd coming and keep feeding baby's milk to grownup believers?

Economics is a reflection of moral integrity. Moral integrity is a reflection of spiritual truth. The spiritual truth is that you aren't very likely to obey the 10th commandment if you don't believe in the first one. America is still enjoying the moral capital of the Puritan work ethic, of a generation who yearned to build a civilization out of a howling wilderness.

But don't tell Bill Maher. He's still trying hard not to believe.

Translation: we won't make it out of this--or any other--crunch without God.

More of the Zoo..

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:49:00 EDT

We went to see An American Carol last night, with Kelsey Grammer, John Voigt, and Leslie Nielsen. Anyone who remembers the Airplane movies will know that Director David Zucker, who is self-billed as the "master of questionable taste," can be counted on for non-stop sight gags. Some of them work. Quite a few of them don't, but the political sensibility of the film is deeply hateful of Hollywood. Anyone who hates the entertainment establishment is my brother, so I took some friends last night, just as a protest vote against the Bill Mahers and the Oliver Stones of this world.

Let me just say, there is enough that is in really bad taste that you may not want to take young children, but Zucker's lack of taste, to be fair, comes in response to an even greater lack of taste, and judgment: the prevailing leftist "wisdom" of the Hollywood elites. That poor judgment takes many forms, but the strangest species of Hollywood lunacy, the disease that Zucker laments the most, is the weird notion that holding up a peace sign and throwing down our arms will somehow foster world peace.

Historically, this is old stuff. Patrick Henry lamented the strange foolishness of believing in "hope" against all evidence to the contrary. Zucker depicts Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo singing "Kumbaya" as Neville Chamberlain shines their boots. The sad reality is that--as ridiculous as this looks--it's a fairly accurate picture of the Cindy Sheehan Code Pink strand of American foreign policy. When the American left abandoned God, or, worse, embraced earth-loving Gaia spirituality, it had a hard time acknowledging any evil but the "evil" of opposing evil. By this strange mental twist, Osama Bin Laden is not a problem. Opposing him is a problem. When the Iron Curtain fell, the the moral cowards at the New Yorker exulted that this was now, happily, the death of anti-anti-Communism. The death of an ideology that butchered hundreds of million people was less joyful to them than the demise of moral reproof.

So relax. Zucker's heart is in the right place. It's deeply American to enjoy seeing jihadists, and their sympathizers, look like the fools we all know them to be.

More Tedious Prejudice

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:43:00 EDT

I had a long talk with an old high school friend yesterday. Let's call her "Gail." She's a doctor, so she's obviously pretty sharp, but she made the mistake of lamenting Sarah Palin's intellect and experience with me.

"Oh, brother," I said, "you're not going to seriously tell me Barack Obama has greater experience--or intellect?"

She was taken aback. How could I possibly compare Sarah Palin and Barack Obama? "He was at the top of his class at Harvard," she stuttered.

Well, not quite. As Jack Cashill reports, Law Review status at Harvard is not a matter of top grades anymore. You will search in vain to find any release of Obama's grades at Harvard or at Columbia, and you will have a hard time finding any example of his writing during those years. When I went to Stanford, I knew quite a few graduates of the prestigious Punahou prep school Obama attended, and I would be very surprised if any of them landed at Stanford with the B- average Barack used to gain admission to Occidental and then Columbia. Certainly, Barack Obama is an articulate fellow. I imagine he's the kind of guy who artfully absorbs all the correct causes and would be a charming dinner guest--but to seriously claim that he has a greater intellect, or record of accomplishment than Sarah Palin, is to engage in a more politically correct form of prejudice.

The left, in America, has its orthodoxies. African Americans with the right beliefs--pro-abortion, pro-quotas, pro-gun-control--well, that's "top of the class at Harvard" stuff.

..even if it's not true.

The Emperor Has Clothing, Unfortunately

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:11:00 EDT

As I was listening to this morning's crushing stock market news, another headline picture jumped out at me. It looked like some sort of new science fiction movie, but it was just Pierre Cardin's new spring/sumer line.

I like to look for connections, and I believe there is a tie between our economic free fall and our cultural free fall. I suspect fashion designers lunge at the outrageous to get attention, and my daughters assure me that no sane woman ever wears this stuff, unless they are getting paid for it, but the very idea of even proposing it seems anti-human to me. Keep in mind, I'm posting the whimsical stuff; a lot of high fashion you couldn't post on a family friendly site, because some of it, frankly, looks as though it comes out of the leather-and-chain-and-pain tradition.

A culture that sees the body as worth mocking, worth inflating, and pinching and bruising and, yes, marking up with colored needles and covering with quilted blue space suits is a culture, at heart, saying to God, "we don't care if we are made in your image; we're going to mock and insult that image; we don't like your creation. We're making another." To be certain, there is fashion that compliments the body, but there is also a dismissive, limp-wristed hatred of the body that expresses itself in what can only be called artistic mockery.

These days, there is a vigorous anti-God movement going on, brought on, I believe, by the violent outrages of Islamic jihadists, but the anti-God movement is older than Voltaire. St. Paul saw it as an eternal expression of those who see the complexity of the creation and still reject their Creator, when he wrote, "the fool says in his heart there is no God."

That dim-witted crowd--the anti-God crowd--see any law rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition as mere superstition to be replaced with reason, but they don't seem to understand the value of the axiomatic, with or without God. One way of understanding the "axiomatic" is to simply affirm that some things are not up for a vote, or even a discussion. If a panel of "scholars" began discussing the merits of killing all five year olds, as a way of reducing long term carbon emissions, we would react with horror. The Judeo-Christian tradition has made that horror axiomatic, but pre-Christian cultures have routinely offered up innocents for slaughter to appease a cruel mother nature God. Christianity put an end to that--by defining a new axiom.

The same dim-wit, Godless crowd that wants to redefine marriage--away from the axiomatic version of man and woman--would be horror-struck at the notion of calling for sanctioned dishonesty in the financial markets. Imagine there were a group of financial consultants who said, in effect, "..it is hopelessly Victorian of you, and puritanical, to demand that we tell the truth about our financial products; we make our living by being dishonest---and what's more that dishonesty is good, because it weeds lazy investors from the market place." Just as gays have called for the recognition of a different kind of love, liars could call for a different kind of truth, which is really just the same old falsehood.

When you start playing with a culture's axioms, you start creating consequences you won't be able to predict very readily. When I was a teenager, the godless crowd was telling my generation that modern science had cured the problem of sexually-transmitted disease. All anyone had to do was avail themselves of the science. But wait! Along came the AIDS plague and the realization that man can only mock God's laws for so long, without paying the piper.

We got rid of Sunday laws years ago. We've come so far that some people even get mad at us--Riley's Farm--for closing on Sunday, but if today's financial leaders were in church on Sunday, (receiving real moral instruction as opposed to seeker-friendly pap), would we be in today's financial mess? If fashion designers were really looking to God, would Pierre Cardin have made a fortune?

And would that poor woman up top look like two slices of a blue nylon pizza?

Saturday Insanity, Soldiers of History, Blessings

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Despite a light rain, the farm was packed to the rim yesterday, with all the parking lots full by about 11:00 AM. Even though you might need a parka and an umbrella, I've always liked the drizzly, foggy Saturdays for a cold apple and hot cider weekend. It just seems more like an old world harvest to me. The nice thing about the weather is that our customers seem to expect it; they seem game for it actually. It's a chance to use the L.L. Bean gear out here in California.

I talked to a 30 year marine veteran yesterday in the tavern, along with his wife and son, and he confirmed an observation I've always had about warriors. "Soldiers love history," he said. That's true. Every marine knows the story of Tun Tavern and the origins of a marine officer's sword and the legends of Chesty Puller. ("All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time" or "Don't forget that you're First Marines! Not all the Communists in hell can overrun you!")

America needs a little more Chesty Puller. If Marines know the value of legend, the rest of us should too.

In the public house, we let too many customers in out of the rain, at about 2:00 PM, and we had trouble getting all the food out, so we beg forgiveness of those 2-3 PM customers. Otherwise, the place was really spinning like a top yesterday. I have to admit, that I prefer the "known-quantity" scheduled Riley's Farm day trip end of our business. The arrival of the apple & pumpkin picking crowd is just very difficult, for any team, to manage. Everyone worked very hard yesterday. Thanks, crew!

The weird political season had me feeling a little cynical about America yesterday, and then, at the Harvest Feast, last night, Wendy from Valley Center went out to harvest wine grapes with me, and she said, "who writes the farm journal by the way?" I told her I did. "I love it," she said. I confessed to her it was my therapy: "They say that writing a journal promotes good mental health, so that means if I weren't writing every day, I would be a complete basket case." "No, no, no," she responded. "It's about time someone told the truth."

Thanks, Wendy.

The Harvest Feast features toasts of gratitude. We give away a five pound apple pie to the guest who best expresses his sense of thankfulness for his blessings. There were some great efforts, and then a boy of eleven or twelve stood up. He was there with his entire extended family, who helped quiet down the room as the boy began to speak. He held up his tankard.

"I am thankful," he said, and then he began to hang his head, and hold back the tears.

"Go ahead," his uncle told him, putting a hand on his back. "Say it."

"I am thankful to be in America," he said, "and out of Cuba."

The room grew silent with the enormity of the child's confession. Try as we might, gratitude is not something we tend to feel when nothing changes; it's a function of our lives improving, from going from bad to better. My own children have been taught--as I have been taught--the blessings of living in America, but not one person in that room knew that blessing the way that child did, as we watched him weep.

I asked his family about the story, and they told me his family had applied for a lottery visa, back in 1988, before the boy was born. In America, we hold lotteries to win a million dollars. In Cuba, they enter lotteries to get out of the country. Their extended family, after twenty years, chose to send the boy, and his mother, to America. They chose to save one of their children, to give him a life.

It puts a gratitude "toast contest" into perspective. Given this weird political season, it was the high point of my week.

Politics! Yes on Proposition 8!!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:06:00 EDT

Thanks to all those folks (hundreds!) who have thanked us for supporting Proposition 8. As you might imagine, the strident minority is...well..strident. It's odd that a proposition that had the support of 61% of Californians in the last election would be called "hateful" and "disgusting."

That would mean, by extension, that 61% of the state is hateful and disgusting. The Catholic Church, the Calvary Chapel Churches, the Mormon Church, and literally thousands of other churches and religious organizations, are, by extension, "hateful" and "disgusting." Pastor Chuck Smith is "hateful" and "disgusting." Pepperdine Law Professor Richard Peterson is "hateful" and "disgusting." The Catholic Conference of Bishops is "hateful" and "disgusting." Three members of the California Supreme Court, who wrote a very dismissive opinion of their colleague's ruling, are "hateful" and "disgusting." I suppose even Joe Biden and Barack Obama, for not supporting same sex marriage, are "hateful" and "disgusting."

And I guess it naturally means that marriage and relationship expert, Brad Pitt, for opposing Proposition 8 is--what?--"loving."

The dumbing down of the public dialogue on these issues is a telling expression of the No on 8 crowd: they have contempt for the electorate. They are precisely the sort of political thugs, who throttle discussion by yelling them down with three syllable street rhymes.

What I find really humorous, though, are the nameless email correspondents who claim they "were about to buy a lot from us," and now won't, because of our "hateful" and "disgusting" stand on protecting marriage. A few of these correspondents actually give out free business advice, telling us that no thinking small business ever expresses a political opinion, as it might alienate customers. George Soros, are you listening? Warren Buffett?

I do have a guarded respect for Brad Pitt and some Hollywood celebrities in this respect: They have to know that by expressing their opinion, they are potentially alienating their fan base. Actors are in business. They need to convince the studios they can attract an audience. They know political expression is dangerous but they still go on saving the wales, condemning traditional marriage, and extending sympathy to jihadists, because, somehow, in their sitcom-informed conscience, they believe they are doing the right thing.

I wish more American businessmen had the same courage--the courage to speak their minds no matter what the cost. I have a feeling you would hear more sense, more rational argument, from people who run small businesses than you would from people who are on their fifth spouse.

And the dirty little secret, guys, is this: sales go up when you tell the truth. We're way ahead of last year. Customers just do not like a phony, bland corporate goon making half-bows to the latest political extortion.

Small business people. I dare you all to tell the truth. You know marriage is an institution worth protecting. You know you don't want your kids growing up in a world, whose traditions can be redefined any time a shrill minority screams and yells loud enough. Put this link on your web site. Do it today:

Pumpkins, TEAC, Bailouts

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:13:00 EDT

Pumpkin Time

Here's a trip to the pumpkin patch this morning. As some of you know, we built an authentic 18th century hay cart this summer, and there is no law saying you can't use it as a pumpkin wagon, so, there we go, (watch the video).

Two trusted advisors say this makes pumpkin picking look too tiring, but I am instructing the staff to bring down a sizeable load of farm grown pumpkins near to the store, for those who want a contained pumpkin picking adventure. For the rest of you, there will be THOUSANDS of pumpkins out there.

This Bailout is looking more and more strange. One "statesmen" tacked on an amendment to the "bailout" bill requiring large companies to pay for mental health care, as part of their health insurance coverage. Think about this for a moment: suppose you buy the argument (many experts don't) that the bailout is absolutely necessary to avert an economic calamity. Is that the time for adding in a mental health care unfunded mandate? (I know the cynical folks would say that's exactly the time, but isn't there someone with a soul left in Congress who can say, "keep quiet, you bottom-feeder?") If anyone was really wondering about the validity of a bailout, the tacking on of pet projects, if allowed by the leadership, would seem to be a clear indication that it was never necessary in the first place.

The political season brings out the best and worst in all of us, I suppose, and the most difficult part of it--for those of us with an amateur philosophical bent--is the maddening sensation that almost everyone argues from a sense of their own invincible righteousness. When a few Obama supporters got their kids together to sing homage to their leader, you can be certain none of them saw any Bavarian fatherland parallels, and you can also be assured Sarah Palin supporters don't see the Governor as a Tina Fey Barbie Doll. Yet, there's a sad reality that keeps the republic from studying the truth very dispassionately: if you can make someone's ideas, or even their person, seem reprehensible, you can avoid ever having to deal in a fair exchange of ideas. You might call this The Idi Amin Condition (TIAC for short). There are some people, and some ideas, that are so evil, so despicable, that only, the Saudi Royal family could abide them. (The Saudis gave sanctuary to Idi Amin, proving that nothing short of the devil himself is pure evil in this life.) TIAC is much more serious than TBSC (The Sandra Bernhardt Condition) which only holds that the person, or idea, manages to be both absurd and pompous at the same time. Either label, TIAC or TSBC, can end conversation completely.

To be fair, I do believe there are certain people, and certain ideas, that should be TIAC, or at least TSBC. Personally, I have a hard time listening to Ted Kennedy on much of anything. A guy who left a woman to drown, without ever even calling the police, and whose family connections earned him a lifelong pass, is bound to have clouded judgment on lots of other issues. Of course, there are those who see another man in Ted Kennedy, and the simple truth is that however much he may deserve it, Ted Kennedy--far from being a symbol of pure ridicule--has a large enough following that he is not likely to be TIAC anytime soon.

There's not much that ever reaches the TIAC stage, because it requires an almost near unanimity, and in those rare instances the idea, or the person in question, can sort of just disappear from respectable conversation. Wrongly applied, these labels should be deeply frightening to anyone who values the exchange of ideas, because they are far more effective at silencing speech than censorship. The other night, I saw Bill Maher leering at a guest, whose opinion about intelligent design was in doubt. He was leaning forward and sneering like an Inquisitor: "you do believe in Evolution, don't you??" To give a qualified answer, in Bill's world, would be to embrace apostasy. Fortunately, there are lots of folks, smarter than Bill, who just have a few simple questions about the flaws in Darwin's theory. As long as both sides insist their ideas not be labeled poisonous TIAC, the conversation can go on.

Truth should never really be frightening, but we should all be frightened of those who insist on calling it falsehood, before the discussion even begins. This sort of trickery is not just limited to election season. It must be ancient, indeed:

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" Isaiah 5:20

Apples &Peanut Butter

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:29:00 EDT

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Apples & Peanut Butter

Last night, before dinner Mary said to the kids, "go pick a few apples." After the kids ran back in with their hands full, she washed off some of the big antique delicious apples, cut them in eighths, and set them out in a bowl, next to a jar of chunky peanut butter. I'm telling you, that wedge of sweet, wet apple-crunch, next to the peanut butter, was like a tonic.

In face of economic gloom and doom, I thought to myself, "if nothing else, we grow apples." (I wonder if peanuts would grow up here; I know I would miss the peanut butter, and we need to put a coffee bean tree in a green house; that's a must.)

My mother, "Grandma Riley," a child of the Great Depression, has been preparing us for deep economic blues since we were children. (Some of her children--er, uh--better than others.) Dad was the optimistic investor; mom was the one who kept seeing war and pestilence and calamity around the corner.

It's odd, but I think both schools of thought have their merits, or rather, you should always have both eventualities rooted in your planning, at all times. Calamities never look very probable in the midst of booms. The guy buying gold in the middle of a stock market boom looks a little balmy, and the guy buying stocks in the middle of a crash looks fool-hearty, but, when you think about it--that is precisely the definition of a wise investor: someone who buys when everyone else is selling and someone who sells when everyone else is buying. Buy low, sell high.

Pretty soon, there are going to be some great stock deals! Think about it folks: a share in a light-bulb factory, or a share in a steel yard or a share in Riley's Farm (twenty years from now, when we go public) will always have some value.

The Perspective Police

I happen to think that most of our problems today can be traced to carelessness, or even ridicule, of the ten commandments. If I were to say to you, "I can't stand it when people are greedy," most people would respond with a nod, and then they would start in on their own woeful tale of being hurt by greed. I would probably try to nuance the conversation by adding, "I don't have a problem with people earning a good living, or even being ambitious about their career or business, but when they covet other people's success, or use trickery to steal other people's goods, that's what I would call greed."

We could go on and on, but basically we would be talking about the 10th Commandment--"Thou Shalt Not Covet."

If I were to say, "I really can't stand it when people lie," someone might respond, "yeah, I hear you, but I will admit that I sometimes have to be a tad dishonest about my wife's fashion sense." We would explore the shades of damage caused by not telling the truth, from complimenting a ridiculous hair cut all the way up to the egregious harm of accusing someone falsely in court.

Basically, we would be pondering the 9th Commandment--"Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness."

Even most secular humanists have to admit that there is social utility in a society having a high moral standard: you need to spend less money on security systems if people understand that stealing is wrong. Court trials would proceed much more rapidly to the truth if everyone felt an obligation to tell it.

But even if you don't agree on the precise nature of morality, western liberty has always granted citizens the right to honor their own conscience, and to form their own associations based on a common understanding of moral truth.

Well, this is beginning to change--and it isn't pretty. A friend of mine was in church the other day, and the pastor was giving a sermon on the 8th commandment--"Thou Shalt Not Steal."

All of a sudden a group of protestors stood up in the back and started yelling, "Theft is beautiful. Theft is gorgeous. Theft is beautiful. Theft is gorgeous."

The pastor was taken aback, but then he squinted at the loud knot of protestors in the back row.

"Are those our choir robes?" he asked.

"What of it?" one of them shouted. "Theft is beautiful! Anyone who doesn't embrace theft is a HATE monger! Many aboriginal populations had no idea what private property even was, Mr. Pastor Man!"

The pastor, believe it or not, tried to be diplomatic: "Listen, people, okay, let's just agree to disagree on this. You think theft is beautiful. We don't. Give us back our choir robes and you can form your own theft-is-beautiful society. Somewhere else."

"Ooooh," one of them shouted. "You want to STEAL our robes back do you? You're a closet-thief! Besides we DEMAND that you teach the beauty of theft as a lifestyle here in your church and your school."

The pastor was beside himself. "Can't we just agree to disagree on this?"

"No," they all shouted, and they began ripping the hymnals out of the pews and shredding them. One of them screamed at the top of his lungs, "we stand with our brothers, the vandals!"

Well, speaking for myself, I believe in liberty. If you believe theft is bad, preach it. If you believe theft is good, preach it. But the minute you start telling me the conversation is ended in your favor, without argument, just because you can shout the loudest, then you have a fight on your hands.

...

Let him who has eyes to see, see.<

Morbid Curiosity

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:10:00 EDT

I usually don't write with CNBC European news piped into my headphones, but the financial news, let's face it, is morbidly fascinating. The vote today in congress seems like one of those startling moments when the representatives of the people, whether you agree with their vote or not, actually acted outside of what the establishment deemed essential. When George Bush and Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Henry Paulson are all calling for the same thing, when they are all insisting seven hundred billion dollars is essential, there is something sobering about contradicting their claim, but the odd thing is that the Federal Reserve today, at virtually the same time, was making $630 billion in cash available to the system--and the markets still plunged.

Is anyone minding the store here? Do any of these people actually know what they are doing?

The story is more complicated than it would seem. Four years ago, it was Republicans asking for better regulation of Sally MAE, and Democrats, anxious to make home loans cheap, resisted it. Likewise, it seems clear that credit default swaps and derivatives were being used in ways that made it difficult for even free market savants to analyze. Here's a Wharton Commentary quote I read on the subject, this week: "What we don't know with any new market is whether something that somebody hasn't quite thought through is going to cause a meltdown." (Comforting, isn't it?) I can't find the link, but Henry Paulson was interviewed by 60 minutes and confronted with a quote that should be sobering to everyone. One Wall Street type was quoted as saying he hoped he made it to retirement before the house of cards fell in on itself.

We can blame politicians, and Wall street, all we like, but we're all to blame as well. Our Congress passed a medicare prescription drug benefit recently that has absolutely no chance of being funded by future generations. (People are birth-controlling their future to death; not enough young people are being born to take care of the old folks.) Social Security and Medicare and unfunded federal pensions just don't have enough new taxpayers to keep them solvent. We keep electing representatives who are afraid to confront America with an invoice it won't be able to pay--unless we cut entitlements.

The common thread in this disease is short term thinking and selfishness. We need to start thinking in terms of millennial civilizations again, and not in terms of what just gets us to our little retirement, or our specific benefit apart from the whole. The corporate management class shouldn't have to be regulated into taking bonuses based on profit. They should do that because anything less is pure thievery. The Congress of the United States shouldn't have a retirement plan that is 2-3 times more lavish than executives in private industry. The retirees of America should have the nobility of spirit to know that FDR was pitching a collectivism that could never work, long term.

Everyone is thinking about the metaphoric $700 billion dollar fix that simply must be implemented, RIGHT NOW, instead of the city on a hill, that will still be shining, after we're gone.

Another Harvest Saturday

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 16:28:00 EDT

Well, we had quite a crowd yesterday; the parking lots filled up by about 10:30 or so, and we had sweet music on all sides (Bluegrass, Classical, and even a bagpiper out on the hills). The Colonial Kitchen actually ran completely out of food by 3:30 PM, with nothing to sell but pumpkin custard, which means our crowds were hungry, and we underestimated their size. The Packing Shed was busy non-stop from about noon to 3:00 PM. (One of our big problems is trying to figure out how to feed people between 4PM and the time the evening dinner events start at 6:00 PM, but Krystle managed to keep the barn open for walk-ons right until the arrival of our nighttime crowd.) Good work, everyone.

We had a Scottish-Irish wedding last night at Colonial Chesterfield. Usually I don't crash weddings, but the bride and groom graciously invited me to stop by--and when I did, I couldn't leave. They had a kilted Irish quartet who sang all my favorite Irish folk songs--Merry Ploughboy, Wild Rover, Whiskey in the Jar. I only had a glass and half of my own Two-Buck-Chuck, but I was grinning like I had about seven. Very fun music, and a very fun group of people. Weddings--for all the emotional turmoil associated with their planning--are a proof of God. "It takes a wedding to make us say..."

Management Memo for McDonald's: when someone orders twelve hash browns, bag them up in the order they were requested. We papas and mamas of big families are going to get together soon, and when we form our special interest group, it's not going to be pretty. Mary and I were waiting in line at a local McDonalds, a few weeks ago, and we ordered a dozen hash browns. They didn't have twelve ready, so they kept filling the smaller orders, even though ours was waiting. We waited, literally, thirty minutes, until, Mary, the Greek, curled up a finger and drew a manager over to the counter.
"You don't fill any more orders until you finish ours."
The manager said, "we have to do the small orders first."
"No," Mary said, "you don't. You do the first orders first. We've been waiting 30 minutes. No one gets hash browns, from here on out, until we do."
"But there's only three on the rack," the manager said.
"Put those in our bag," Mary said, "when the new ones come up, put those in our bag, until you get a dozen in there."
"A dozen?"
"Twelve," Mary said. "A Dozen."
The manager looked at me, a little helpless.
"She's right," I said, "You guys don't know what you're doing. She's a Greek. They know food service. You guys could use a Greek-Squad around here."

As a customer, courtesy goes a long way, but there are some service-industry teenagers these days, who wouldn't care if your "fast" food order took three days to fill. As a business owner, I am reluctant to admit that, rarely, we have hired a few of these, but I'm setting a new goal to find these workers among our ranks, and give them a little religion as fast as possible. A few years ago, there was a kid who was so shy in the parking lot, he couldn't even bring himself to point to parking spaces with his whole arm. He was using his finger. Cars were backing up down the driveway, while the shy teenager made little pointy gestures near his shirt pocket.

Applebee's is different. They are tip-driven. You get your order fast, with a smile, and if you aren't happy, they aren't happy.

Now, if Congress could operate a little more like Applebee's.

What Brand Makes You Feel Comfortable? The role ofan unexamined prejudice in modern life

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:35:00 EDT

We all know the categories of prejudice that are discussed, and re-hashed endlessly, in contemporary life: racism, sexism ageism. We have made a secular liturgy of discussing these issues, and, no doubt, some good has come from it. As a tail-end baby-boomer I absorbed the principle, taught very early on, about the dangers of stereotyping. If our generation wasn't going to get anything else right on the ethical/moral front, we were going to end prejudice--at least end the sort of prejudice that was directed against the approved list of victims.

The problem with departing from a more comprehensive standard, the Golden Rule, is that this narrow goal created an entitled set of the oppressed and it put classes of people at war with each other--many of whom were never either oppressors or victims. If anything, the prejudice police created more prejudice, and they ignored other, more tangible forms of bigotry.

Just the other day, Katie Couric conducted an interview with Governor Sarah Palin. Whether you like Governor Palin or not, consider Katie's weird editorial agenda: She refused to refer to Sarah Palin as "Governor" Palin. (One correspondent observed that perhaps Governor Palin should have referred to Katie as "Sugar.") Here's a research project for you students of the American media: has there been a Couric-Obama interview? How many times did Katie refer to Senator Obama as "Barack?"

That unchallenged bigotry in American life today is elitism. Katie Couric, and her ilk, are part of a self-diagnosed, self-worshipping elite. I know something about this mentality because I was once an abject slave to it. I remember thinking, as a young college numb-skull, that the real answers were known by people who went to Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Berkeley. Elitists were Anglicans, or agnostics, or atheists, or Jews who didn't take their religion seriously. Elitists were lawyers, judges, physicists, investment bankers. Elitist art usually had some connection to an academic master of fine arts program. Elitists were progressive Democrats, limousine liberals, political lesbians, union apologists (as long as their family money wasn't threatened by organized labor). Elitists were friends of the earth. Elitists were usual divorced at least once. Elitists were apt to start a sentence with the words, "the latest thinking is," or "Studies show.."

Elitists recoil at patriotic displays or talk of God. Elitists are apt to say, "it really isn't that simple," even if it really is that simple. Elitists are people like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Barbara Walters, Charlie Gibson, Allan Dershowitz, Oliver Stone. You don't have to be a snob to be an elitist; you can even be sort of low-culture. Chris Matthews and Rosie O'Donnel are elitists. Elitists, at base, have a very deep faith in the status quo, in the notion that the experts really know what they are talking about. Elitists tend to hate guns, because they feel only the "experts" should use guns. With a few exceptions, elitists are likely to have utter disdain for holistic medicine, chiropractic, or anything that even remotely questions the theory of evolution.

John McCain can travel among the elitists because his dad was an admiral and he graduated from Annapolis and his wife is American gentry, with at least 2nd generation wealth. John also knows how not to offend the elitists by taking up some of their nutty causes, (global warming, open borders.).

Governor Sarah Palin, however, is a moose hunter. Elitists just do not shoot moose. It's hard to even imagine how an elitist could shoot a moose, unless it was part of a Dartmouth University $55,000 per head photography outfitting trip, led by Bill Moyers, where proceeds benefit teenagers with sexual identity disorders. Governor Palin attends a Bible-believing church; this violates the Elitist abridged, two page version of scripture. Governor Palin has an intact family, not a perfect family, but a family that owes up to its own mistakes, (without trips down to Planned Parenthood to kill off the unwanted young' ns.) Elitists really can't stand power of conviction: anything that places people within the context of family threatens the Elitists desire for a world where no one has to answer to anyone but the government for their sustenance.

Not all elitists love the state, but what they have in common is a sense that there are approved sources of information: The New England Journal of Medicine, The New Yorker, the Atlantic Monthly. When Tom Brokaw lamented that Dan Rather was a victim of "internet jihad," he was demonstrating classic elitism: even if an elitist is a blatant liar, only another elitist can expose him, not some amateur laptop internet sleuth. I mean really.

..So when Katie Couric can't bring herself to call Sarah Palin, "Governor Palin," she's really saying "I can't bring myself to call this woman a governor; she rushed my sorority and we didn't pledge her."

Apple Media, Sweet Melon Bailout Scheme

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:11:00 EDT

Apple Media!

Good Day L.A., Rick Lozano, and Channel 11 Fox News visited the farm this morning with a nice crew. (Click the link for video of their coverage.) I'm so used to internet media, and cable up at my mom's place that I forget there are people who still get broadcast (over the airwaves) television. People dropped by all morning saying, "I saw you on the news."

Federal Assistance

I made several attempts to contact Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, but he seems tied up or something. I wanted him to know that we planted a watermelon patch this year, and even though our watermelons are sweeter than any you can buy at the store, we had so many we sold them at one dollar a piece. The obvious loss on this crop could have ripple effects on the economy and, in keeping with the current thinking about these things, I wanted to ask Secretary Paulson if he would consider bailing out my watermelon crop. It would require considerably less than $700 billion, and we wouldn't even have to set up a new federal agency. Well, as I said, he wouldn't return my call today, so I called Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking committee. Senator Dodd took more money from Fannie MAE than anyone else in Congress, and I imagine he wants a new issue to take everyone's mind off the sub prime debacle. If he had answered the phone I would have said, "Senator, you and Senator Obama and a lot of your colleagues wanted Fannie MAE to extend loans to a lot of people who might not be able to pay them back, and I was thinking that everyone likes a good sweet farm-grown melon, and, owing as I have already made these available to the public at below cost levels, after a fashion similar to your altruistic banking adventures, perhaps you could, er, earmark an agricultural subsidy to my farm, so as to assure a melon in every pot?"

(I finally watched O Brother Where Art Thou last night--start to finish.)

Well, Senator Dodd did not take my call either, so I did not have the opportunity to propose this altruistic venture, that, truth be told, might have been instrumental, in some small way, in propping up the demand for melons and preventing a run on melon patches around the country. I now have calls into Senator John McCain and Barack Obama, and this time I am not going to make light of the situation. Selling watermelons at this price probably means a loss, in hard money, of $702.33. We have a very small melon patch, but before things get completely out of hand, I am going to DEMAND that either Obama or McCain promise the American people that Riley's Farm receive an unconditional grant of $3.8 million.

Once this vital federal aid is received, we can talk about meaningful reforms--AFTER our patch is rescued.

It all sounds perfectly logical to me, given the state of current thinking on these matters.

Sad, Sad News -- The Division of the Church

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:17:00 EDT

I received this email yesterday. It speaks for itself:

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of a very important person, which almost went unnoticed last week. Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote 'The Hokie Pokey' died peacefully at the age of 93. The most traumatic part for his family was getting him into the coffin. They put his left leg in. And then the trouble started.

Shut up. You know it's funny. Now send it on to someone else and make them smile.

(I am a shamelessly easy mark; this sent me into a giggle fit.)

The Division of the Church

There are two kinds of Christians in the world today --those who mean it, and those who don't. God Bless the Catholics who put the following message together:

There is a useful way of understanding the many divisions of the Christian church today, and it really doesn't involve traditionally "conservative" or "liberal" labels. It has nothing to do with the church's take on the last days, on the sacraments, on prophecy, or on worship music.

When I think of a church, my first impulse is to ask, "will fellowship here make me any better a believer, and will it make my community any better?"

Another way of putting this is very simple: on earth, in the here and now, is your church real, or is it pointless?

Nearly all Christian churches weigh in on the issue of salvation, and well they should, but they differ in one critical respect. Does the church have anything to say about the way you live your life and the way the broader culture functions? Is your church bold enough to weigh in on political issues? Does it have anything very coherent to say about the law, about film, about music?

There are some folks--Whoopi Goldberg comes to mind--who are scandalized that the church would have anything at all to say about the law, or about society. (Whoopi asked John McCain, in hushed tones, whether he would ask God, in prayer, about policy. Her version of the separation of church and state meant a president who never prayed very seriously.) These folks like a silent church, or a church that only speaks on an agenda they have chosen. On the far left, there are some churches which are little more than social justice clubs, with just enough scripture to serve as varnish. The media laments the power of the "values voters" associated with evangelical congregations, but if my experience is any guide, there aren't a whole lot of marching orders given at any of these churches. Some Evangelical pastors like John MacArthur even belittle the efforts of Christian political activists, going so far as to question their salvation, by implying they are looking to the government to save them.

I have come to the sad conclusion that most churches studiously try to be as inconsequential as possible. If they do venture outside of their sanctuary, it is to collect market-share points on issues of bland good will. ("Go therefore, into all nations, cleaning highway roadsides and recycling beverage containers.") A friend told me the other day his pastor was worried about tax law if he endorsed proposition 8. ("Go therefore into all nations, giving truthful sermons IF they square with existing tax law.")

In truth, pastors can speak to any issue they like. They can't endorse candidates, but they can talk about issues all day long, if so moved. They don't speak to real contemporary political issues, either because they don't believe Christ has anything to say on the matter--or, more likely, they just make a cowardly surrender to the "peace at any cost" church-growth imperative. Unlike the New England Congregationalists of old, pastors aren't given three year contracts anymore. They depend on the plate, and a sermon that is controversial might halve their take. It takes a very dedicated servant of the Lord to avoid the economic realities.

I don't think, however, that churches have become sluggish merely because of economic fear. Some pastors are proudly, and disdainfully mocking anyone who aims to make better this fallen world. "You're just polishing deck chairs on the titanic, brother," they say, as they get set for the next sound and light system fund raiser and their next prophecy conference. Others disdain tending the vineyard because they nurture "abandonment theology." Christians who build hospitals, who make movies, who run for office, who envision the building of a new city, are just investing in a kind of earth-based legalism.

A lot of Christians wonder why they don't get more converts. It's simple. The pastors have made their faith boring, inconsequential, and irrelevant. They are timid, boring cowards in this life--and that's the way they'll be in the next.

They should spend a little more time studying David, and Ehud, and Joshua, and Peter. With apologies to my boyhood friend, John Eldridge, they should get a little wild at heart.

Christians First, America Second, Business Third

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 15:48:00 EDT

Gorgeous, clear fall mornings this week so far and a fair number of apple and lunch customers yesterday--for a Monday. I can't get over how many people have never heard of Oak Glen, but it stands to reason: people tend to ignore their backyards. A few years ago, I stopped by the Edward Dean Museum and was astounded to see fully re-created 16th century interiors just a few miles down the road.

Write what you are excited about: I'm an unrepentant capitalist, (given the dismal failure of secular collectivism, it's difficult to be anything else), so I tend to defend business people in most public policy disputes, but I am beginning to note that there is a particular sort of businessman who needs a good scolding.

A story by way of background: years ago, during the Cold War, I saw a news report about a Japanese company that was selling submarine prop-silencing technology to the Soviets. This technology made it difficult for western countries to monitor the location of Soviet nuclear subs. A group of congressman held a press conference on the steps of the capitol and announced their intention to levy massive trade penalties against the company in question, and they even followed it up by smashing the company's consumer electronics with a sledge-hammer.

"Love it," I said. "That's great."

A friend of mine--a Stanford M.B.A.--was annoyed with me. "That's just going to make personal computers more expensive. They'll just slap more tariffs on our stuff."

"Skippy," I said. (Whenever someone says something stupid, I call them Skippy.) "We are talking about NUCLEAR SOVIET SUBS."

"Different unit," he said.
"Say again?"
"The consumer electronics is a different unit of the same company. That's too broad brush. It just offends our trading partners."

"Skippy? Did you say 'offend?' Are you seriously worried about offending someone who is making it easier for nuclear subs to sneak up on us by arguing--what?--we've got the wrong product manager?"

There's a certain sort of global corporate goon who really has no country, no heart, no soul, no allegiance to anything but market share. I keep seeing, in my mind's eye, a pastor arguing with a Mitt Romney type, freshly returned from the Beijing Olympics. The pastor keeps saying "but they torture religious dissidents." Mitt just smiles patiently and says something bland and hopeful like, "but we're giving the Chinese people economic opportunity, and increasing our market share." Pastor: "Forced abortions." Mitt: "Market Share." Pastor: "No Freedom of Religion." Mitt: "Market Share."

When Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock risked their fortunes to help a country with no real navy fight the greatest naval power in the world, they weren't thinking about market share, or global partnerships, or the "prudent" course necessary to protect their pocket books. They were thinking about truth first, and markets second. It's one thing when a kook like Janeane Garofalo describes herself as a "world citizen," but when American businessmen, or even American churches, begin assuming there is a common cultural reality between Riyadh and Beijing and Kansas City, we are in trouble.

As I told my MBA friend, "Just because you can make a sale, doesn't mean you should."

Even Liberal Democrats Support Proposition 8

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:14:00 EDT

The new public restrooms are nearing completion, (right). The building, designed by Jeff Hammond, is too gorgeous for a mere privy, but that's what it is. Wouldn't it be cool to build a dozen or so country cottages, like this one, for family colonial vacations? If this is what we built for a public restroom, can you imagine what the country inn is going to look like? People have a bad idea of any sort of development, but if you build with an eye towards historic standards, the land is complimented by the buildings.

Dream, dream, dream. Money, money, money. Permits, permits, permits. Worry, worry, worry.

We're happy to report that we had a record breaking Saturday this weekend, (we're closed Sundays). Our year to year sales were up by double digits. One lady called us and asked if our web menu was a current version of the food prices. We said yes. "It looks like you're charging 1950s pricing." I think she was being kind, but we did raise our menu prices a little. The conventional wisdom in a closed venue like this is to really extort the customer, since there's no place else close to buy food. (You know: movie theater pricing.) I can't stand that. I still don't go to Disneyland anymore, after I had to buy a stinking tube of sunscreen for $11.00. I have no patience for customers who try to cheat us out of our living, by stealing apples, or over-stacking their bags, but I can't stand the pay-through-the-nose experience either. I think we've struck the right balance.

Heah, even liberal Democrats are backing Proposition 8. Folks, marriage is about a man and a woman and kids. People wonder what gives Riley's Farm that old time feeling, what makes it special. Well, we're no saints, to be certain. Our family feuds even get published in the newspaper and I had to turn down both Dr. Phil and Jon Stewart when they wanted us on their shows. But that "old time feeling" is about family, about kids, about constancy, about ancient truths like the Ten Commandments, about God's word. You can't just go redefining institutions because Ellen DeGeneris wants to borrow them, or because Brad Pitt, the marriage expert, has weighed in on the matter. Riley's Farm is Riley's Farm because grandma Riley stuck by her man (for more than sixty years) and raised a family. When Liz Taylor was changing hubbies, mom was changing diapers. When Tom Cruise was jumping around on Oprah's couch, celebrating his new gal friend, we were celebrating new grand kids. When Norman Lear was splitting the bank with his ex-wife, dad and mom were putting it away for their kids.

Whatever you do on Proposition 8 folks, promise me you won't listen to Hollywood's advice on the subject of marriage. Thinking liberals support proposition 8. The rest of that Hollywood crowd takes marriage so casually, they don't really care how it's defined.

Vomitophoria

Sun, 21 Sep 2008 20:35:00 EDT

I don't believe I had ever heard of a vomitophor until I was about nine years old, and then only in very hushed tones. I sensed that there was something forbidden about the topic because when I asked about it, my dad turned on the radio right away and said, "let's see if we can get the Dodger game."

And then one day, we held a birthday party for a neighborhood kid around our backyard pool, and Chad Coombs threw up in the shallow end. None of the mothers wanted us to swim after that, and Freddy Marchand--a big kid who had been looking forward to swimming all day--just let go with a vomitophor scolding. "Friggin' up-chuck head," he yelled, "Barf brain. Vo-MIT-ophor!"

My mother, who always believed in a direct approach, sat all the kids down and said, "Freddy. I want you to apologize to Chad. He just has an upset stomach. He is NOT a disgusting vomitophor."

"What IS a vomitophor?" Susie Dahlquist asked.

Mother's voice became very quiet. "It's someone who..who has a psychological condition, a sickness."

"What KIND of sickness?" I asked.

Mother bit her lip and then said. "It's someone who shows their sick, twisted love for someone else by, by, throwing up on them."

"Grooooossss," went the chorus of children, on cue, after a pause to consider the enormity of the depravity being considered.

"Freddy," Mother said, "apologize to Chad. He is NOT a vomitophor. That's a horrible thing to say about someone."

"Yeah," Chad said, a little urgently, "I was just throwing up in the pool. Not ON someone."

"Groooooossss."

Well, as time went by, that natural revulsion we all felt was re-visited when, as a teenager, I asked mom if there was something a little strange about Mr. Kibley, a bachelor in his fifties, who sometimes visited the house.

"He's just never found the right girl," Mom said.
"Dad says he's a vomito--"
"I don't think that's the case. And if it is, just, just pray for him. The poor soul keeps it to himself."

When I compare the sort of revulsion we all felt for this condition years ago to the almost sacrosanct position, as a lifestyle, it now enjoys, I have come to believe that cultural standards, in a democracy, are really just subject to the whim of whichever group can yell and scream the loudest. Think about it. At one time, vomitophoria was classified as a mental illness, and now you have to teach your children it's merely a different kind of love. Major corporations need to show they have vomit-friendly hiring policies. You can't turn on a network sitcom without seeing a barf smooch. Churches have had to change their wedding vows. Instead of kissing the bride, you now have to be prepared for someone...well..you know. There are poor little orphan kids who have to wade through this nonsense, literally, because vomitophors have demanded the right to adopt children.

And if you don't go along with this, if you have the audacity to say, "heah, people, get a sink, will you?" you're accused of being a hate monger.

People make fun of the ancient texts, but the more I read them, the more I think they speak to the eternal condition of mankind. Remember that story about the vomitophors who weren't satisfied barfing all over themselves? They had to yell and scream for the house-guests to be sent out, so that they could gang-barf them?

Misery loves company. Sometimes it even demands it.

That Seventies Reunion

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 17:50:00 EDT

Somehow, thirty years have slipped by and it's time for my high school reunion. One of the coordinators sent me a list of the top 100 songs from 1978. Here's what I wrote back:

Can we just pretend 1978 was not our year? Those really are lame. I had managed to block the lyric "three times a lady" from my mind, until it jumped out at me and stirred up the old motion sickness. I vote for the whole Patsy Cline to Pretenders continuum, with emphasis on classics.

This must be why I'm on a farm, enjoying old music and old ways and old, open skies.

I mean, really, listen to some of these titles:

Night Fever, Bee Gees: Can't you just see the blow dryers and the bad white suits? No teenager should be forced to share a generation with this music, and no parent should ever have to explain a photo taken during this era.
You Light Up My Life, Debby Boone: I like the Boone family, but they played this song so many times you could almost feel the vinyl grooves widening out in the record. (I keep seeing a paramilitary interrogator with a khaki uniform and pencil-mustache, armed with a turntable and a Debby Boone album. The single light in the cell clicks off and the music starts. "No! Anything! Please!" Yooooooo Liiiiiiiight up my Liiiiiiiiiife.)
Stayin' Alive, Bee Gees: More Saturday Night Fever Disco temporary insanity. Who was responsible for disco? I want names.
Three Times A Lady, Commodores: someone skipped English Lit. How do you mix a love song with auction lingo? Is he proposing to her, or selling her? ("When we are together, the moments I cherish with every beat of my heart.") That barely works as a greeting card. They didn't have red pens in the 70s?
Can't Smile Without You, Barry Manilow: Post Mandy. I like Barry Manilow, but he should have taken a break from song writing in 1978. As you can tell, the song-writing muse was in a medically induced coma this year.
Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad, Meat Loaf: "I want you; I need you; there aint' no way I'm ever gonna love you."
Don't these Meat Loaf lyrics make you feel special, ladies? Even during the alley-cat, shag-wagon Seventies, this song seems like a testimony to public school syphilis instruction. Can you see a couple anywhere, saying, "honey--two out of three; they're playing our song!"

Hot Blooded, Foreigner: Check it and see? Check it and see? Did I hear that right?

Dust In The Wind, Kansas: the guys who wrote this song were fighting off a severe depression brought on by listening to too much 1978 music.

They say old soldiers have a comradery born of a common experience of suffering. I'm anxious to see my old friends, and I'm pretty sure I know the source of our common misery. We survived that Seventies Music.

Pumpkins -- Yes on Marriage

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:07:00 EDT

Pumpkins

We're opening up the pumpkin patch this weekend, with baby bear, charisma, and GIGANTIC varieties available for you to pick. Frankly, I'm not quite sure how we're going to sell the big pumpkins. We know they have to be between $50 and $95, depending on size and shape, but we're not sure how anyone will get them in their vehicle. I guess we'll have to play this one by ear. If you want to buy a big pumpkin, ladies, bring at least two big, surly dudes with you.

On the apple front, we are picking Red Astrachans and Galas this week, and we'll have some SWEET music in the Packing Shed and the Colonial Chesterfield Public House.

We are now a major web presence. We received a check for Google for ads placed on the site, and propriety keeps me from, uh, bragging, but let's just say it's enough to buy the family dinnner--a pretty good dinner at that.

We are now content providers. Take that, Matt Drudge. Take that, MSNBC.

�

Okay, okay, so the site is getting a little political but why can't I speak my mind in a political season? Why should political commentary be left solely to intellectual heavy-weights like Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Lindsay Lohan, and Danny DeVito? If more American businessmen cared about the truth first and profits second, we wouldn't have public policy that looked like Barbara Streisand actually had some hand in crafting it. (Sing, Barbra...)

.. Why should political commentary be left solely to intellectual heavy-weights like Matt Damon, Brad Pitt, Lindsay Lohan, and Danny DeVito?...

Here's the deal: no matter what you think about same-sex relationships, the simple fact is that the push for "gay marriage," is not about civil rights. Like so much of the gay agenda lately, it's about a very heavy-handed attempt to make the rest of the world walk lock-step with its perspective on sexual propriety. Marriage is a centuries old Western institution. If it is extended to same sex couples, religious adoption agencies would have to abandon their spiritual mandate to place children in families with mothers and fathers. Forcing gay "marriage" down the throats of western traditionalists is a bit like Nazis demanding they be able to conduct bar-mitzvahs in Jewish temples. It's really saying that a religious association doesn't have the right to preach, and enforce, its own standards, its own freedom of conscience. Personally, it doesn't bother me if a gay person were to call me a "breeder" or were to consider heterosexuality as immoral or environmentally unfriendly or even "sinful." Let people think and associate, as they choose, but if they require me to teach my children what I don't believe, or endorse a marriage between people who don't qualify for marriage by my own spiritual standards, they are forcing their own dogma on everyone else; they have become the thought police.

And that just isn't reasonable, nor is it American.

If you think the gay agenda is benign, take a look at some of these news headlines, taken from the protect marriage site:

On April 27, 2005, a Massachusetts father was jailed after requesting that his 6-year-old son's school notify him when it discussed homosexuality or transgenderism.

On February 23, 2007, the judge in the Massachusetts case ordered the teaching of the homosexual lifestyle to children in public schools.

On May 8, 2008, a black administrator was fired from the University of Toledo, Ohio, for objecting to the comparison of black discrimination to same-sex marriage.

I encourage you all to support Proposition 8. Don't be afraid to do the right thing, and to encourage others to do the right thing as well.

The Year of Jubilee -- Riley's Farm Survival Shares

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:27:00 EDT

We once knew a guy who, out of desparation, got into one of those new age cults that locked people in a conference room for eight hours and wouldn't let them use the bathroom until they had "taken responsibility" for their lives and their decisions. (I don't know how you take responsibility for your life if you can't make the decision to use the bathroom, but that's one of those obvious questions that linear thinkers are supposed to ignore, I guess.)

There was one aspect of this weirdness that sounded like a synthetic version of immortality for me: plan out your life as though you were going to live 300 years--pick a new career every 30 years.

If I had that option I would devote at least one career to economics. I have been watching this financial news with morbid fascination this week. Think about it: century old companies looking for someone to bail them out over a weekend? The Bank of Scotland suddenly disappearing after being around since 1695? Merrill Lynch and Bank of America looking nervous about joining forces after another one of those weekend meetings?

Scott and I kept joking that at some point you expected CNBC to cut to a financial reporter running his segment with a portable generator and a hand held camcorder, looking a little bit thirsty and fighting off looters with a pistol. (We Rileys tend to remember Grandma's stories of the Great Depression.) The measured language of financial news reporters seems sort of comic in light of the news being reported. You half expect someone to just blurt it out: "I'm heading for the hills!"

".. What, after all, can you expect from Harry Reid? This guy looks like he couldn't lead a leper colony to Jesus, let alone the United States senate to a rational conclusion..."

In that spirit, it might be interesting to consider one of two ideas. The first idea is that old Hebrew notion of Jubilee--everyone starts over. Debts are forgiven. All slaves are free. Everyone returns to their ancestral home--if we could figure out where that is. It might be too difficult to attempt all of it, but since most of us are slaves to the federal government, maybe the feds could go without any income tax for a couple of years, and since banks brought some of this on by indulging in derivatives and hedge funds (what Warren Buffet called "economic weapons of mass destruction"), maybe all bank loan payments could be forgiven for a period of two years. (Okay, a mini-jubilee).

All right, so probably no one will go for that, but it does beat Harry's Reid's very astute observation on the crisis: "no one knows what to do." (What, after all, can you expect from Harry Reid? This guy looks like he couldn't lead a leper colony to Jesus, let alone the United States senate to a rational conclusion. )

Another idea is this: how about Riley's Farm Survival Shares? If things really get bad and roving biker gangs take over Southern California, for a fee (yet to be determined and reviewed by our legal counsel), you get good clean mountain water, a farm to help work, livestock to shepherd, pigs to butcher, and the friendly fellowship of country people--while we all ride out the second Great Depression. The rules are: you must believe in God, the Ten Commandments, hard work, and the United States Constitution. You also need to bring your own guns and your own ammo. Fiddle players are especially encouraged.

Another Reason I won't be voting for...

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 19:52:00 EDT

If you sat down and had a long talk with most of the Riley family, I am willing to wager that most of us would be considerably less "congenial" than Barack Obama. In fact, next to Barack we would appear downright cranky. Sure, we like entertaining. We enjoy a good laugh. We kid each other, but most of us would notagree to nod our heads and go along with platitudinous claptrap just to make everyone feel good. If someone started talking about universal healthcare, we would tell them about all the people around the world killed by it. If someone started waxing misty-eyed about FDR, Grandma Riley would tell you about her father's experience supervising worthless WPA workers. If someone started beating the drum for disarmament or world peace, we would show them what cast-iron hand cuffs look like, and ask them if they were looking forward to being a slave. Heck, if a young woman doesn't wear enough clothing, Grandma Riley will tell them to cut-it with the free peep show.

Sunday nights at Grandma Riley's are full of friendly, and not so friendly, family debate.

We're not running for office, in other words. Knocking down stupid ideas is almost as fun as shooting skeet. (Actually, for me, a wild idiot hunt is far better than target practice.)

Sunday nights at Grandma Riley's are full of friendly, and not so friendly, family debate. There are some people who mistake silence for inner calm, who think an exchange of boring pleasantries is more "Christian" than a spirited exchange of ideas, and they don't last too long with us. In some ways, we almost get along with people who like to debate better than we do people who refuse to be challenged, even if they hold opinions opposite to our own.

We generally don't, however, debate Barack Obama, because there's not much fun kicking water around in a shallow puddle. The man who thinks the American back country is "clinging" to its guns and its religion clearly still sees the world from the perspective of the dorm cafeteria. The man who can't bring himself to hear the screams of an abortion baby born alive, is so busy doing the will of Planned Parenthood, he hasn't had time to think for himself. The man who proposes soaking the upper five-percent of the workforce, so that he can hand out more federal programs, has not yet incubated enough testosterone to challenge his socialist econ professor. There is little wonder he needs Scarlett Johansson singing "Yes we Can." When you have no idea what you want to do in the first place, you need some serious bosom-cover. The man so desperate for a voting base, he is willing to listen to racist black liberation theology, for twenty years, very simply is not yet a man. He's still a student, A kind, gentle, eager to please freshman.

So what's there to debate? He's just the neighbor kid next door, spouting the community college line. The problem is--that line is seriously evil, as the video above makes clear. It's not even worth a debate. I would advise all believers--and all people who care about basic human right--to think twice before pulling any lever, or punching any chad, for Obama. The most poisonous evil can be delivered in the safest looking package.

A lot RIGHT and WRONG with the World

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 16:15:00 EDT

WRONG

One of our farm employees (let's call him "Dylan") is a bright, witty young fellow starting in on his general education requirements at a local junior college.

".. community colleges, and universities in general, are full of pensioned dolts like Dwight...."

Now, I am quite certain there are many dedicated, fair-minded people in our community college system, but there's a certain brand of pretentious moron you can only find among the non-empirical disciplines in the "junior college" faculty lounge. (You know the type: the sort of people who believe "women's studies" or "sociology" are actual academic disciplines.)

A little background. The instructor (let's call him "Dwight"), began by observing that Playboy really is a very serious magazine, with high journalistic standards. Dwight made sure to remind the students they should avoid the dirty pictures and read the articles, but how, really, are we supposed to process the idea of a public servant who encourages newly-minted adults to stock up on liquor-store fantasy-rags?

Well, let's just skip the weirdness of this too-much-information moment and get to Dylan's assignment: stand up in front of the class and extemporize about good subjects for a magazine article. Dylan began down a nuanced track. His idea was to analyze the use of violence and sex in contemporary movies, to test the hypothesis that lowest-common-denominator material is being used more and more to cover up otherwise tedious plot lines and shallow character development. The idea was getting a lot of nods from Dylan's fellow students, with the consensus forming that the story material in Hollywood was indeed getting weaker and weaker.

"Too broad," Dwight, the 'teacher,' responded. "Too difficult to measure."

Well, Dylan was followed by a female student who said she wanted to write about students who have had babies.

"Teen pregnancy," Dwight, the 'teacher,' responded. "Very topical. Good. Great. Right on."

Having graduated from Stanford, some of my friends ask me why I have such little faith in sending kids off to college. The simple answer is that community colleges, and universities in general, are full of pensioned dolts like Dwight. If you go to college, these days, you not only need to be as smart as your friend, Dylan, you need to be willing to tell the Dwights of the world where to get off.

But, then, maybe Dwight is doing that all the time?

Anyway, kids: it is not 1910 anymore. Be prepared to acknowledge that the person standing up there in the lecture hall is not, in any sense, a "professor" of truth. He might just be a hairy Marxist cruising for chicks. On your way to your degree, think of your college experience as a track and field event--the high hurdles, where you have to run down the track, jumping over--or knocking down--one idiot after the next.

RIGHT

This may sound like a strange entry for the "RIGHT" category but read on:

Yesterday, we attended the funeral of Jill Wood, a long time farm friend and living historian. Jill had staged a pitched battle against cancer for two years, had entered a period of remission, and then faced a sudden and drastic turn for the worse this summer. It was an open service, with friends recalling Jill memories. Almost to a person, everyone remembered her with words like "regal," "poised," "charming," "brilliant," but always "warm," and "kind."

I first met the Wood family on the phone, when they asked me if they could host a 15th century Irish, German, and English military campaign on the farm. They had a renaissance faire background and I was very cautious, because we're a family show, and I never liked the way the Renaissance Faire depicted my heroes--the Puritans of the Bay Colony. (The Puritans were the intellectual heavy-weights of their era, contrary to the tsk-tsk-ing of community college librarians today and some Ren-Faire types bent on a good debauch.)

Something told me the Wood family, and their friends, were different. They followed our rules. They pursued honest living history; they loved the farm, and we became friends. When their child, Susannah was born, they spent less time re-enacting and devoted their time to their daughter. They became homeschoolers. Through the influence of many people the Lord brought into their lives, Jill converted to Christianity and was baptized in a home church service.

At the funeral, a good friend of Jill's, Bridget Honan, recalled their last time together here on the farm. They were dressed in period clothing for our Christmas in the Colonies dinner, and they were up in the cider barn pressing cider on a cold December night. The doors of the barn were opened up and the snow started coming down around them. Bridget smiled at their clothing, and then at Jill and said, "it feels like we're in a story book."

"Well," Jill said. "We are--sort of."

I don't know why that touched me so much, except to say that there are people out there looking for heaven, every day, in small things, and I felt that kindred longing with Jill, for a better world--a paradise we see here on earth from time, in something as fragile as snow flakes and candle-light at Christmas.

Although we will miss Jill, the great consolation is that even in sad news, there is joy.

Jill has found that paradise. Praise Be...

Ball Preparations

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:33:00 EDT

Mallory and Lizzy have been head-bent to the sewing machine for the last few days, in preparation for the Blue Gray Ball. Mary has made excellent seamstresses of the two of them, and the house is filled, stem to stern with silks and lace and festoonery. The hoop skirt itself, I'm told, is the easy part. The bodice is what takes a lot of fretting and cutting and re-fitting.

Even though I don't claim to be an expert on historic clothing, I do know this: fashion reflects the ideals of an era. Our age puts a great deal of emphasis on "the casual" and "the comfortable." The A#1 question people ask me when I wear a wool frock coat, wool breeches, and a wool waistcoat is "aren't you hot in that?"

Some historic costumers insist that the corsets women wore in the 18th and 19th century were relatively comfortable, and I can't confirm or deny that, (ahem), but I do know this: we have seen "casual" females in shorts and t-shirts transform themselves into radiant, angelic princesses just with a costume change. The Victorians, and the Georgians, valued beauty, and elegance, and refinement, and they achieved it in their clothing. Our generation values comfort and sex, and, well, you see the results daily.

Our own generation has been cheated by fashion. Flannery O'Connor wrote that "the gas we breath is nihilism." We also wear it too. The most recent entry is that frazzled man's haircut represented by "Extreme Makeover's" Ty Pennington, and several million others. You may like it. You may not. But doesn't it seem to be the very embodiment of confusion, disorder, accident? Can you imagine taking the presidential oath wearing this sort of do? It just seems to me that something majestic and flowing and more or less symmetrical is the right look for someone who sees himself as part of an ordered universe, with the Almighty at the helm.

I'm not legalistic about this, but I do get a kick out of contemporary baggy-jeaned, tattooed teen-sheep who mock the fashions of yester-year. Whenever an adolescent makes fun of a three cornered hat, or breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes, I say:

"Listen, Skippy, the guys who wore this clothing could load a musket four times in a minute, under fire. They fought off the greatest infantry in the world. They cut down whole forests with their hands and brought civilization to the wilderness. You can barely manage life without an Ipod, and your Deltoids look like bathroom art."

To each his own, I guess.

Dimwit Alert: The Collective Pain Body

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:36:00 EDT

First of all: fair warning. You have to be really, really shallow, or really, really patient to enjoy watching this interview between Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. The "Pain Body," according to Eckhart--who has all the eyeless animation of a beige-colored tub of salt-free tofu--is the collective, atmospheric body of wrongs done to your demographic. If you're Native American, the victory of European settlers is your "pain body." If you're African-American, slavery is your "pain body." If you're a woman, the patriarchy is your "pain body." Keep in mind, you don't have to have been victimized by any particular evil, or any particular perpetrator. If you're in a historically victimized group, you have deposits in the "pain body" bank. You can, in other words, blame it all on the "pain body."

Tolle, a Deutsche-born child of the German fatherland, doesn't believe that a drive-by shooting, or even the Nazi holocaust is evil. (Evil doesn't exist, for Tolle, but "pain" does. (?))

Well, it seems Oprah knows a good thing when she sees it. There is simply no way you can excuse the preaching of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's twenty-year pastor, without finding a new philosophical construct to do some heavy-duty bamboozling--and I mean pronto. If "Pastor" Wright enjoys a 10,000 square foot, golf course-view home, and a great middle-class American education, I mean, how can he be playing the martyr?

Well, Eckhart Tolle, the child of the fatherland, has found a way. It has the beauty of being both an excuse and an accusation of ignorance at the same time:

"What you can't possibly understand, Mr. _______ (fill in white, male, or European as necessary), is the extent to which "the pain body" has damaged me!"

According to Eckhart Tolle, the "pain body" actually took over Jeremiah Wright's person when he gave those racist sermons blaming all of the world's trouble on "rich white men." This sounds like a nordic, New Age version of "the devil made me do it," but we know that new names sometimes breath life into bad ideas long dead. (In the educational world, the failed "look-say" reading methodology became the academy-sanctioned "whole language." In the world of economics, "socialized medicine" became "state funded single-payer.")

When in doubt, find a new name for an excuse everyone knows is either stupid, or evil, or both. Oprah's popularity, given this reality, is deeply disapointing. There is no such thing, class,as the "pain body." It can't be measured, weighed, or calibrated. There is no vault to hold this stuff, no lab to study it, no camerman to get it on film. It's high-falutin' BALDERDASH and New Age snake oil, and, most importantly a rationalization for re-investing in race-hatred and race-politics. Watching Oprah is something like taking a big spoonful of moron-milk-shake with your Grapenuts in the morning. For the the sake of the mentally challenged people in your extended clan, you should begin treating Oprah like nicotine. "Sorry, Aunt Chloe, this is an Oprah-free zone."

I wouldn't be so worked up about this idiocy, except to report that some suffering sister called the farm today, apparently in response to our Civil War civilian event, and asked a race-question so crass, I won't repeat it here. It never fails. You try to host an event that features the American Civil War and some folky code-pink nut ball tries to plant a burning cross on the front lawn--just so they can kick it down. I wouldn't be surprised if she was wearing a Ché bonnet and opening the doors on her "Pain Body" advent calendar, ahead of schedule.

I'm with the Calvinists on this one. Some people are born children of hell, and this lady, short of a mighty act of God, is one of them. So here's a message for that moron on the phone today--go home and cozy up to the father of lies in that burning, brimstone pit you seem destined for. No decent person could ask one of our staff the question you asked today.

Get thee behind me, Satan. And that's my Christian opinion!

The more of those godless Marxist barbarians you killed, the better..

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:29:00 EDT

Civil War living history goes back a long way here, and I've often thought that the real men and women who lived the American Civil War from April 12, 1861 to to April 9, 1865 packed more life into those four years than most people could live in five or six lifetimes. We've seen young re-enactors take their first coltish waltz around the barn at the Blue Gray Ball, returning eight or nine years later with a wife and three children. We've literally seen small children go from camp kids to soldiers, over the years, growing up in the hobby of living history. We've seen ranks of wall tents, painted with snow, and shivering hands reaching for camp coffee at dawn, even as they recollect warmer battles they enjoyed here on the farm. We've heard the "war within a war" as reenactor units complain and gossip about each other. One year, the Union attacked the Confederate breastworks and the rebels threw snow balls at their attackers, even as someone on the Union side was yelling "safety violation!" (There was a heated after-action exchange later.) We've seen last year's best living history friends become this year's worst enemies, and last year's "discredit to the hobby," become this year's "fantastic impression."

One year, I nearly blinded myself by falling "dead" with a fife jabbed into my cheek. Another year, a guy fell right on a high pressure irrigation riser, broke it, and water went shooting all over the battle field. (We called it the battle of pumpkin springs.)

As a result of the land use compromise we made to save our field trip programs, we no longer do the big battle re-enactments with hundreds of soldiers firing away at each other, but one autumn, when we were fifing and drumming to the sound of the canons, the awful beauty of ancient warfare struck me powerfully, with music radiating harmony to the thunder of the big guns, and I turned to see crowds wiping away tears at the awful sacrifice of the men we were representing. I remember a certain well-loved re-enactor who handed me a business card one night that read something like "marriages arranged, revolutions fomented, attitudes corrected." He died a few years ago, after re-living the Civil War on weekends for more than a decade, and I was tempted to think there is something ironic in spending part of your life (which is very short) living someone else's life--but then I knew that this critique is really just the withering lament of the devil, who doesn't want us honoring the past, who doesn't want us remembering glory, or sacrifice, or courage. The adversary wants us to languish in the effeminate-god-hating-Bill-Maher present, sneering at absolutes and reviling virtue.

One day a grizzled old Vietnam veteran scolded me for giving a patriotic speech after a battle re-enactment. (Most Vietnam veterans are very patriotic folk, but every once in a while, you meet someone from the dark side of the force.)

"What did all my buddies die for?" he asked.

"Liberty," I told him.

He was taken aback. He expected me to go along with the standard party line about the futility of the Vietnam war. He was stuttering, speechless, trying hard to re-group. He--an old veteran--was astounded that someone would defend his war.

"As far as I'm concerned," I told him, "the more of those godless Marxist barbarians you killed, the better. Are you apologizing for fighting evil?"

The guy was mentally arthritic, of course, a victim of the hemp-headed dopiness that passed for deep-thinking among the Woodstock brats. He was accustomed to using his Vietnam veteran status as the last word in any argument about war.

"Granted," I told him, "you had tinkering idiots like Robert McNamara at the top, and craven, election-stealing cowards like LBJ, but the country wanted you to kill Communists. And you should never apologize for that. You should be proud of it. How many Bolsheviks did you kill anyway?"

"Uh," he said, "uh, uh."

Uh is right.

Sometimes the participants in American history don't appreciate the true heroism of their actions, or God fashioned them to speak with their actions, and not their words.

That's why, I think, you need poets, and novelists and historians, and even re-enactors. As one of our redcoats told me, when thanking another, wiser veteran for his service. The fellow turned to him and said,

"no, no, thank you. You're keeping the memory alive."

The Horrors of the Committee

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:49:00 EDT

Picture the dingy functionality of a municipal meeting room--industrial carpet, folding metal chairs, empty walls, a box with weathered pencils next to a stack of empty speaker slips. You have waited two hours for your turn. When you step up to the microphone and face three committee members, only one of them makes a slight effort to smile encouragement.

Committee Member #1:		"It says here you need a gall bladder operation."
You:		"Yes. I have waited eighteen months."
Committee Member #2:		"We'll get to that. It's better if you just answer the questions as we put them to you. In the interests of time."
You:		"Very well"
Committee Member #3:		"Your records indicate you have been given some dietary recommendations. Have you followed them?"
You:		"Yes I have."
Committee Member #1:		"Your records indicate you are not the only provider for your family?"
You:		"That is correct. My wife works, and my daughter contributes as well. We can't really pay the rent unless--"
Committee Member #2:		"Once again. If you would just answer the questions and skip the editorializing."
You:		I wasn't editorial--
Committee Member #2:		Mr. Slipowitz! There are a lot of very needy people in this room--some of them who have faced the challenges of single parenthood. We want to hear from those people as well. Don't you agree they need a voice here as well?
You:		Of course. I just--
Committee Member #3:		On a scale of 1-10, 10 being the worse, how would you rate your pain?
You:		10
Committee Member #3:		..and yet you are here, speaking for yourself.
You:		Your rules require that I appear--.
Committee Member #2:		We know our rules, Mr. Slipowitz! Unless you stop this constant rumination--
Committee Member #1:		Let me interrupt. It's obvious that you are in a great deal of pain, and you have our sympathies, but it is important that you are aware that the average wait for a gall bladder surgery is 27 months, with many patients waiting much longer. I do have one question which may speed things up.
You:		Yes?
Committee Member #1:		This month, we have a priority mandate to fulfill. Have you, or any members of your family, ever suffered from any asbestos related work injury?
You:		Uh, no...
Committee Member #1:		Well, let's see here. How about this: Do you have any children who have complained about hetero-normative prejudice in school?
You:		Hetero-norm--? Prejudice? No..
Committee Member #1:		Well, this might be a long shot, but do you have any relatives employed by the ministry of health?
You:		No. I don't believe so.
Committee Member #2		I believe I've heard all I need to hear from this applicant.
Committee Member #1:		(Trying to smile). Mr. Slipowitz. We will do the best we can.

It may sound far-fetched, but something like this is really occurring just north of the border, in good old progressive Canada. A friend told us this weekend that her aunt made the trip down here to Southern California, from Canada, to get her gall bladder operation taken care of. She had been waiting for Canada's health care bureaucrats to get around to scheduling her operation for two years, with no success.

"..Socialized Medicine will have to rank as one of the 20th century's greatest crimes against humanity. .."

Socialized Medicine will have to rank as one of the 20th century's greatest crimes against humanity. As inefficient as our health care system is, it is infinitely better than a system that kills service motivation by turning everything over to the state. Health care workers are motivated to help hurting people, to be certain, but they are not saints, and they, like the rest of us, simply don't work very well without having to answer to the market--the free market.

A college friend of mine worked for a heart surgeon who made a fortune inventing new surgical catheters. Would that have happened under a Bolshevik committee system? Why should it bother anyone if someone makes a tidy sum solving a very needy problem? Would a $250,000 a year surgeon put in 8 surgeries a day, if he were paid by the surgery or just by the day he showed up? The collectivist urge to willfully misunderstand human nature would be almost comic, if it weren't so tragic. It's very simple: remove the profit incentive and things get very slow, shoddy, and nasty. (Have you ever been to a social security office?)

A few years ago, I saw a restaurant unloading oak barrels. They were going out of business and they were giving the oak barrels away. I made the mistake of telling the family up here that they were all free. (You can never have enough oak barrels on a living history farm.) I should have just picked them up and charged $20 a piece. The prospect of "free" barrels created a weird sort of tension, where family members began talking about who "deserved" the free barrels more, who "needed" them more.

The market, in this flawed world, is a kind of divine gift to ward off this insanity. You get what you pay for. You decide if it's worth it.

But if you take away the market, you find yourself up in front of the heartless committee, trying to put a measuring stick to your "need" against everyone else's "need."

I'm telling you: socialized medicine, and the prospect of these sorts of committees, is far more horrifying than any Hollywood horror flick. When the Great White Shark cuts you in half, it doesn't ask you take a number, and die politely.

Harvest Morning, Water Retention Dreams, Marcus Welby

Sat, 06 Sep 2008 13:04:00 EDT

It's looking gorgeous out there this morning, and we have lots of fruit to pick and food to eat and great music to hear--so come on up!

More Water-Retention Dream Life:

This week, I dreamt I was asked to host a last minute interview between Barbara Walters and Ben Stein. Thirty seconds before air time, Barbara and I were still trying to decide what the show was going to be about, and Ben Stein was no help at all. We decided to do a "life path" piece where I asked Barbara, (who was somehow an old friend), and Ben where they saw themselves as young people, and if they had taken careful steps to become what they were, or whether it was all just serendipitous. The live, pool-side audience didn't seem too interested, and before the show completely bombed, I was called off to the bathroom at precisely 3:33 AM. I will admit to a certain amount of superstition about clock times. 9:11 AM and 9:11 PM make me pause, but 3:33 in the morning seemed weirdly symbolic after a three way "life path" interview dream.

I also had a dream that the family and I were in a travel office somewhere and an Ibex happened to get trapped inside the waiting room with us. It was a beautiful animal, but it kept menacing us with its pointy horns, and my attempts to gently pat it on its rear, with the broadside of the pitchfork I was holding, didn't do any good, so when it lunged at me, I had to end its life. It was 4:11 AM when I woke up.

Marcus Welby

I've had some great doctors in my life. When I was clobbered with a golf ball line drive at 14, saintly old Charles Petty, oral surgeon, opened his office for me on a Saturday and stitched me up. My own Loma Linda doctor, Sonny Lee, is a farm fan and he is a GREAT doctor. When I was a kid, my dad actually walked me over to Dr. Nebeker's house and he diagnosed a hernia on a Tuesday night, with no Blue Shield and no waiting room.

The strange thing, though, about the world of medicine these days is that it has become so specialized and so pressured for time, that I think the average health care seeker should spend about three hours on Google prior to any doctor visit. An example: some years ago, I thought I had broken my foot. It was so painful. In retrospect, this malady went back to college, when my feet would get sore for no reason. Well, one weekend about five years ago, it was so painful that I went down to an urgent care and had someone look at it. The doctor looked at my foot, x-rayed it, concluded it was a "soft tissue" issue and told me to get some Alleve. He asked me about my blood pressure medication and hesitated for a moment, but said nothing. Well, he was on to something, but he didn't pursue it. When I got on Google and self-diagnosed myself, Dr. Lee looked at my foot and confirmed my judgment, "yes, you have Gout." The diuretics for high blood pressure can sometimes aggravate this condition. Most of the drugs specifically for gout have some weird potential liver side-effects, so I opted for a holistic thing--dried cherries and baked potatoes. They work.

The point is: the Urgent Care doctor was just about to make this diagnosis, but he knew less, effectively, than I did about the matter. Sometimes the presumption that a doctor knows what he's doing keeps us from suggesting a diagnosis.

Questions are the answer, I guess.

And sometimes cherries and potatoes are too.

The Two Americas

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:05:00 EDT

I believe it was Mike Huckabee who called politics "a full-contact, blood sport," and he was right. Having watched the political stories surrounding Governor Sarah Palin for the last few days, I don't understand why more American men don't enjoy the combat of political exchange. Granted, the game is considerably less objective than football or cage-fighting, but the stakes are far higher. The outcome of political debate determines how many criminals we put in prison, how many babies are saved from abortion, and how many soldiers we send to war, and for what causes. It's the ultimate power game, and it's fought with words.

Words strike us in different ways, depending on our perspective, and the very idea of pitching "objective reporting" as a virtue is ill-considered. We are not "objective" creatures, nor are reporters. Dan Rather's pattern of rushing to air with false information is only the most dramatic example of agenda-driven "news" gathering. The fact is that Chris Mathews gets chills up his legs when Obama speaks because he share's Obama's political world view. It's best to recognize that a vigorously self-described partisan press would be far better for America than a bunch of bland pundits claiming to be objective when they clearly favor one agenda over another. We struggle for the truth by hearing the dialectic--the exchange of radically opposed ideas. Juries, and voters, are best served by two sides stridently pointing out each others faults. The notion that this exchange should, or could, be "civil," is very hopeful indeed, but I'm not sure we are served by ideas expressed as neutrally as possible. I hate James Carville; he looks and sounds like an alien to me, but at least he doesn't pretend to be objective. When James Carville puts on that little evil grin and chides Sarah Palin for giving intelligent design equal time in the classroom, at least I know I'm hearing from the Devil himself--without a disguise.

Last night, one of the MSNBC talking "heads" lamented Sarah Palin's sarcastic tone, but when Joe Biden repeated his "John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama was right" chorus, and made his "George-John" Freudian slip joke, that didn't even register, because your perspective on the content governs everything. Sarcasm is registered as "someone finally telling the truth" if you share the perspective of the speaker. When Sarah Palin made her "community organizer" joke I laughed out loud, because it punctured the sanctimonious emptiness of Barack Obama's ridiculous pretension to experience, and it was a master-point scored against the vicious attacks directed at Palin and her family this week, but if you are an Obama fan, perhaps it sounded demeaning.

The fact is that underneath the rhetoric, there are two Americas competing for the ever-sleeping middle. There is an America very comfortable with a God who has specific policy answers, and there is an America who believes God should either be ignored or used only for spiritual juice at religious pep rallies. There is an America who believes violent criminals should be punished, and even executed, swiftly, and an America who believes social "science" has made the ancient formula of justice barbaric. There is an America who sees human beings as having dominion over the natural world and an America who sees humankind as merely the most problematic in a congress of a million co-equals species. There is an America who sees government as the problem and an America who sees government as the solution. There is an America wholly comfortable finding their identity as a member of a family tribe and an America of atomistic lone-wolves, jealously guarding their orientation and reproductive rights.

Case in point: A former president of Planned Parenthood, Gloria Feldt, laments Bristol Palin's decision to have her child. "Because of her family's attitude she probably doesn't feel that she has a choice in terms of what will happen to her,” Feldt said. For me, that's the musing of a different America--a sterile America, a barren America, an America that sees children as mere tissue to be extracted and discarded if their arrival doesn't fit an approved career plan. Feldt can't comprehend a woman's journey if her first child doesn't arrive after her PhD dissertation is complete and she has arranged for suitable child care and she has sampled enough men, sexually, to decide on her final mate--if she wants a man at all in her life at all. The reality of course, is that far more teenagers are forced into an abortion, than they are forced into a full-term pregnancy. Life is the natural, and the fulfilling course. Abortion is the path far more likely to cause depression and utter despondency. You don't need a masters in sociology to understand that; you just have to see the little Palin girl pasting her little brother's hair straight with a handful of spit. Women are fulfilled by motherhood. Only places like Columbia could teach you any different.

When asked about his own daughters and abortion, Barack Obama made this curious statement, "I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." Values? Morals? "Punished" with a baby? The immaturity, and the elitism, of that oxymoron reflect a kind of poison that is killing the other America. There is a desperate need to believe, among Obama disciples, but you can't argue for baby-murder and still feel the glow of Sunday School. You can't listen to a racist pastor, Sunday after Sunday, and still claim you are fighting for a color-blind America. You can't coddle Islamic jihadists and still claim you are "fighting" for America's safety. You can't argue for tax-and-spend and still claim you are a champion of prosperity. There is a kind of insanity that results from trying to hold two opposing ideas in your head at the same time, and then basking in the polite self-flattery of claiming to be "objective."

America needs a good fight to save its soul.

So let the games begin.

The Evils of the Death Tax

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:42:00 EDT

We had as pleasant a labor day as I can remember--clear and cool, with a steady stream of guests out there picking apples, pears, and raspberries. The strawberries started to thin, but not because the plants weren't producing; they were just too many guests. The numbers aren't in yet, but it looks like we clobbered last year's volume by quite a bit. (Not arithmetic--a geometric increase.) Either there is no recession, or people are traveling closer to home.

We had a family meeting on Sunday about estate tax issues, and--let me tell you--the single biggest reason family farms (and family businesses) do not last is because of a piratical tax system in this country that knows the dead do not vote. To those of you unfamiliar with this issue, here's a very rough idea how it works. Suppose you and your wife make the mistake of starting a successful business. Your kids actually like the business and they want to keep it going. Prior to 2001, if the business were worth more than about $2.4 million (a fairly small business by today's standards), your children would have to pay the IRS, upon your death, 55% of the business value over that amount. To his credit, GWB tried to eliminate this unfair tax, but congress came up with a weird compromise that eliminated the tax over 10 years, scaling back the rate each year, and then--get this--a provision to bring it back exactly as it existed prior to the reform. Suppose you're one of the sons of the founder and the IRS presents you with a bill for $3 million dollars. Most people sell the family farm, the motorcycle dealership, the great little chain of high-service dry cleaners. A big corporation buys it all up and builds homes or absorbs that old family operation into a chain.

People tend to think the estate tax is a way to sock it to the wealthy, but it really hurts small operators and benefits big corporations who want to grow by absorbing small businesses. The big boys know the 2nd generation needs to sell quickly, to please the IRS, so the assets are sold at discount. Family farms are turned into tract housing and the hardware store whose owner was your classmate in high school, gets turned over to a corporate trainee who can't make any local decisions.

There are ways, to soften this blow, but they usually involve paying the ransom before you die--with life insurance premiums. (Insurance guys love the estate tax.)

.. Theft is still theft if it's approved by a majority. Can you imagine a legislature saying "we have a population problem; let's execute people with last names beginning 'W' through 'Z'?..

Whether it was the old pre-Reagan income taxes that soaked top earners 70% of their yearly income, or the estate tax, or the luxury tax, these income tax schemes exploit the flaw in human nature that expresses itself in the adolescent shop-lifting myth: "they have TONS of these candy bars; what will it hurt if I steal one?" We actually see a bit of this on the farm. People steal apples. They buy a picking sack and then pile up more fruit in their purse or their backpack, or pile it up against their chests, and balance the theft right out to their cars. ("What will it hurt; there are lots of apples up here.") It's the same impulse expressed in the legislatures of our nation: "we need more money; let's take more from the 'rich.'" Theft is still theft if it's approved by a majority. Can you imagine a legislature saying "we have a population problem; let's execute people with last names beginning 'W' through 'Z'? That is effectively what democracies do when they vote for abortion freedom: they kill the members of the population who don't vote, and then they cover that sophistry by calling it 'choice.' That is also what they do when they vote for confiscatory taxation on 'the wealthy.' They identify a minority and then tyrannize it. (Usually, of course, we're not talking about the super-wealthy; they have the resources to create their own loop holes. The 'wealthy,' under these schemes, are the guys who were dumb enough to spend 14 years becoming a doctor, or who mortgaged their homes to create a small family business.)

The problem with confiscatory taxation on the wealthy, of course, is that it ends up destroying the most productive elements of the economy. If you tax productive businesses to feed a cadre of new civil servants, you take job-creating revenue away from the very people who can provide careers in the first place, and you funnel it into a government trough that just gets bigger and bigger. Certainly there are government services that need to be provided, but you must make the burden of those services fall evenly on all tax-payers. Unless you are comfortable saying things like "let's make ugly people pay more," you shouldn't be comfortable concluding "let's make business owners pay more."

Republics depend on the virtue of the people. More of us need to go back to Sunday School and spend less time worshipping Oprah.

Parent Dreams

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:25:00 EDT

A few nights ago, I dreamt that Mallory flew the family helicopter down to her friend's house without permission and forgot to check the gas before coming back. She stalled in the air about 60 feet over the house and I had to carry a gas can up to to her, with a ladder, just to get the helicopter down. The dream also featured a new parking lot, just across the road from us, carved into the mountain.

Mallory is learning how to drive, but we never let her drive the helicopter, (because we don't have one), nor do we have a sixty foot ladder. The parking lot across the road was sort of a harvest time vision of the number of cars that make it up here at the height of apple season.

Teenagers learning how to drive and the frenzy of the apple season: great dream fodder for a restless night. If you are an old guy or gal like me, and you think you have stopped dreaming, try taking diuretics for blood pressure, and you will find that you actually do have a reasonably vivid dream life, particularly if someone in your house is learning how to drive, and you recently actively considered a helicopter flight over Hoover Dam.

Civil Discourse

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:52:00 EDT

We had a fine season start yesterday. It seems to me I was writing about this same pattern last year--the late August, wet-sky heat that beams the sun down your neck collar as though it were refracted through a million tear-drop lens. Sure enough. We had this exact pattern last year on nearly the same day.

All morning, the clouds rushed to meet up over Wilshire Peak. At about three o'clock, they let loose with great door-banging thunder in every direction, and everyone rushed into the packing shed or the colonial tavern for cover. Fortunately, there was no hail this year and the storm only lasted for about 20 minutes, just enough to fatten up the pumpkins.

Let me wax rhapsodic about strawberries. They keep coming on all summer. We still have blooms getting ready to fruit-up and we were told they would go dormant in the summer heat, but, since we're cooler up here...they keep coming on. Oak Glen is about apples, and Law's coffee shop, and living history and, now, strawberries. There is a new kid on the block. We actually did run out yesterday, because we had so many pickers, but we should have more by Monday, when we will be open for Labor Day and our new fall hours.

".. We become what we are taught. We are what has been preached to us..."

You might think I'm excited about politics, particularly national politics, since I've been writing about politicoes for the last few days. Well, I vote in every election, to be certain, and I have no use for citizens who don't vote, or who don't know the issues, but I think that a culture is really only a reflection of its best traits on the local and personal level. If you live in a town where everyone believes God cares about each of your decisions, you are likely to live in a more peaceful, prosperous place. If telling the truth were a cultural virtue at least important as "saving the planet," we would not have political heroes as shallow and ideologically amorphous as Barack Obama and John McCain. We get what we deserve. We become what we are taught. We are what has been preached to us, and what we are taught by our pastors and our media is mostly ill-considered junkyard scrap for the mind.

It's not just the braying of a Jeremiah Wright either. It's everywhere. "Christ the King" has been turned into "Christ the Recovery Counselor," and Christians no longer expect their world view, their sense of justice, to prevail in the world. They have been turned into zombies with far-away smiles, C.S. Lewis's "men without chests," who quietly wait for the rapture, or their own individual appointment with Jesus, Who will probably consider them a colossal bore. The church that once inspired the greatest musicians and thinkers in the world now mints polite, soft-spoken lads who obey their wives and never make waves. Rick Warren, for example, spoke of the virtue of a "civil" debate about national issues. He went out of his way to call both John McCain and Barack Obama his friends.

That's sweet, Rick, but whatever happened to "I come not to bring peace, but a sword?"

Here's a simple fact that you won't find mentioned from the pulpit much these days: you don't want some people for friends.

You don't want them around your house, around your business, around your children, around your church. John 17 is problematic for the "civil at all costs" brand of friendly Christianity. "..I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. ." Or "..Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?" (2 Corinthians 6)

Now we can debate who qualifies as a "friend," and who is an "enemy" and who is merely a candidate for conversion, but the "mental junkyard scrap" that prevents this discussion from ever being held in the first place is that weird "unity at all costs" doctrine that has infected the church, and the nation. No one wants to consider the danger of mixing "Christ" with "Belial," of mixing "righteousness" with "unrighteousness" because the modern, market-expanding mind recoils at the notion that someone will have to be the bad guy. How many times have you heard someone repeat the cliché, "there is no right or wrong answer here, folks."

That sort of thinking, for the most part, is mental junk yard scrap.

It is either righteous to kill a child in the womb--or it is not.

It is either righteous to allow American soldiers to die for an Islamic Constitution in Iraq -- or it is not.

It is either righteous to lie to your parents, your spouse, your boss-- or it is not.

Christians talk a lot, properly, about the washing away of sin by Christ's blood, but you can't fight the stain unless you can identify it, and you will never be able to identify it, unless you are willing for forfeit the junkyard notion that "civility" requires us to never speak the truth.

August 31, 2007 8:27 PM

It has become a pattern up here--the Iowa-like late August STORM. This morning there was a kind of wet-furnace heat that was beat back and cooled down by a storm breeze. It felt like someone in the sky was warming up for a dance--and then it broke out like a billion-pint break in the heavens. The tin roof packing shed screamed with applause and the roads opened up into small streams almost immediately. A few seconds outside the door left you completely drenched down to your socks. When I saw hail coming down, here and there, I pleaded with the Almighty. "Stop," I screamed.

Well, it didn't stop right away, but the hail was kept in check and we didn't lose the apple crop. They're all still there, juicy and fat and pucker. I ate a rain-freshened MacIntosh from the Stone Pantry orchard. Freeman thinks it's still one week early for those, but we will add Jonathan's and a Graven stein or two to the mix tomorrow. It should be fun.

There will be lots of music, good food, and great harvesting tomorrow, so I expect to see you! NO excuses.

Barack Obama -- Either a Fool or Evil Incarnate

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:38:00 EDT

More on The Audacity of Hype: this is a borrowed subtitle, but it's useful.

If you think, I'm picking on Barack Obama because I like John McCain, you would be wrong. It's just that John McCain doesn't have people worshiping him in the aisles and weeping for the promised land. If the blogosphere has any use at all, it is to help people consider, at least, where they might missing something.

So here goes:

Abortion: Some folks don't like single-issue politics, but let me use one of my rare environmental metaphors. A politician's stand on abortion is what I would call an "indicator species." Environmentalists will sometimes measure the health of an eco-system by looking at the health of one species. If a particular bird is doing well--reproducing well, free from disease, plenty of food sources--it is a good sign that the rest of the ecosystem is doing well. A candidate who wants to radically expand abortion rights is a kind of indicator species for a candidate's moral-system. An extreme pro-abortion position is a sign of a warped and diseased world view. When a pro-abortion Republican tells me he's soft on life issues but a real economic conservative, it's a sure bet he's a liar. Time and time again, the people who can't even defend the unborn prove that they don't have the spine to defend a budget either.

".. It doesn't surprise me that Ted Kennedy--who dumped a girl in the river and left her to drown-- doesn't care about the unborn.."

Let's be clear: we're talking about someone who has no concern for the unborn, for the smallest people who have no vote at all. A radical pro-abortion candidate, to me, is something like a pro-slavery candidate 150 years ago, except far worse. As evil as slavery was, it doesn't even come close to the murder of the defenseless. It doesn't surprise me that Ted Kennedy, who dumped a girl in the river and left her to drown, doesn't care about the unborn, but, frankly, it does surprise me that the African-American vote is so solidly pro-abortion. This part of the electorate is, for the most part, well-churched; they are believing people who know more than a little about oppression. It is an outrage that Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's spiritual mentor, can call a Three Strikes law evil and doesn't include abortion in his litany of sins calling for God's judgment. Calling the punishment of criminals evil and state-funded abortion good is a sure sign that someone has terminal moral cancer.

Barack Obama, for all his kindly demeanor, has a position on abortion that goes beyond what even N.A.R.A.L. demands. On the floor of the Illinois senate, Obama argued against a bill that would have required doctors to care for the lives of infants who survived a late term abortion. Obama, ignoring evidence to the contrary, argued that he failed to see how any doctor could turn away from a breathing child and not care for him. This is the most telling critique of Obama's "Audacity of Hope" language. Obama's was clearly informed that doctors and nurses were, in fact, allowing living newborns to die unattended and he still proceeded in his demented and foolishly optimistic view of human nature.

He is either evil, plain and simple, or a fool. In any case, he is not ready to be President of the United States.

Tipping and the Christian Witness

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:52:00 EDT

I've been working on getting a reasonably period looking menu in the Hawks' Head Public House, and it reminded me of something that happened last night at Berry Picking Date Night. A very large group with a church affiliation visited us for dinner. They were a little upset that that it was getting too dark to pick, so we tried our best to please them, by moving their entire table of twenty or more to another location. That was no small feat. Mary and Nicholas drove up to the packing shed to help Krystle and the girls move the tables and all the place settings. We had already given the group a 15% discount, and, according to Krystle they were nearly impossible to please, start to finish.

Bottom line, for a party of twenty, they left a $10 tip--and a tract.

I wonder how many of these people have prayed in front of an abortion clinic, or stood up for Christ in the workplace, or even bothered to memorize the ten commandments.

Years ago, a Christian radio talk show host, who had worked his way through college in a restaurant, observed that very nearly without exception, church people on their way back from Sunday service were the worst tippers in the entire restaurant. Here on Riley's Farm, these sorts of Christians, fortunately, are the exception. Some of our best barn dances and church parties are with the Calvary chapel groups. They have fun; they are courteous to our staff, and they are generally easy to please.

There are some people, however, that make me think God is, indeed, a master screen play writer, and that He enjoys the drama created by dumping jars full of jerks into garden of Eden every once and a while.

"..I wonder if Barack left a tract on the podium, after announcing his plans to screw the American economy? .."

Speaking of Jerks..

Another "Christian," Barack Obama, promised 95% of the people tax cuts last night, and forgot to mention that his version of Bolshevism means that the most productive members of our economy will be extorted to pay for his grand world view. I'm not a member of that percentage, so I have no dog in this fight, but if you tax the wealthy, Barack, you IDIOT, you will shut down the economy that provides jobs for the rest of us.

I wonder if Barack left a tract on the podium, after announcing his plans to screw the American economy?

The Pandering of Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:29:00 EDT

This is now a very old story, of course, but I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon. I've been turning it over in my mind, trying to find ways of disregarding it, but it simply cannot be ignored, because the charismatic religious quack you see on the right, Jeremiah Wright, was the pastoral mentor of a major contender for the presidency of the United States.

It is both sad, and startling, that 45 years after the "I have a Dream" speech, an educated, articulate Columbia and Harvard graduate, Barack Obama, could still claim guidance from someone who is clearly a racist nut. It is alarming that Obama could have endured five minutes in this church, let alone twenty years. Of course, political expedience has required Obama to repudiate some of the pastor's words, if not the pastor himself, but I see more to fear in two lingering realities about America that are highlighted by the "Reverend" Wright's rhetoric: 1) the rhetoric has no small following and 2) a large portion of the American electorate is apparently willing to ignore a theology that would earn anyone else immediate "kook" status. It doesn't even appear, among progressives, that "Change we can believe in" has turned into "Change--gulp--we can believe in."

If Jeremiah Wright were merely a whack-job who spoke to a very small band of the urban disaffected, he might be worth ignoring, but as you can see from the congregation's response, this pastor is not exactly crying repentance to a stony-faced band of worshippers who are rejecting the pastor's interpretation. This message of hate is being embraced with smiles and amens and upraised arms of praise. The pastor according to one report, is being given by his congregation a 10,000 square foot golf course home as a retirement present. Certain kinds of hate, apparently, are profitable in America.

I've had a few months to think about it, and here, as I see it, is the problem: almost all of us are born suckers for being told "it's somebody else's fault." That doesn't mean we don't sometimes face real instances of injustice. If your ancestors were tied together with chains and brought over in the hulls of infernal slave ships, it would certainly leave a cultural scar. If you had to watch your father being called "boy," it might make you a very angry young man. In my own case, on a completely different front, my father worked his way out of the onion fields and was completely unbothered by government regulation until he started to become successful, and then the vultures descended, en masse, hungry for wet meat. (He told stories of a certain federal agency that appeared angry he had broken no law.) He talked about members of his own church who were cultural snobs, because dad didn't have a college degree. He talked about knowing that he was completely, economically, on his own when his own father died when he was seventeen. He talked bitterly about unscrupulous produce brokers that flooded the market and left his family without income. My dad had a keen sense of injustice, and he didn't ignore it. He fought it. But he didn't live for it either. He didn't make a religion out of it. He didn't purposely ignore the good around him, simply because there was a lot of evil.

The damning reality of Reverend Wright's theology, and the true mark of its hatred, is that it revels so completely in victimhood that it lashes out against anything handy, including the virtues it should be embracing. In his oft-quoted "G-d D*mn America" sermon, Rev. Wright lamented a "three strikes law," as being one of the "chickens come home to roost." Preposterous! Unless you believe that murderers and rapists and thieves should be protected from punishment, and that the innocent should be exposed to their cruelty, only a fool could lament that the just penalty of the wicked would bring on God's just condemnation. The Bible clearly indicates that unpunished crime causes condemnation, not condemned crime. ("So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it." Num 35:33)

A feudal, emperor-worshipping Japan bombed our country on December 7, 1941. The same band of barbarians committed some of the worst outrages against humanity in Nanking, prior to the war, and Rev. Wright references our use of nuclear weapons as another "chicken come home to roost." Talk to some of the Marines who had to fight every inch of disputed ground in Okinawa and see if you don't think our use of the bomb was not, in fact, deeply humanitarian to both Americans and the Japanese. The fact that Rev. Wright would use Hiroshima as a sign of America's injustice is a sign of more than just bad theology. It's a sign of stupidity. A congregation who wants to ignore the Islamic Jihad of 9/11, simply because it might offend fellow-travelers among the Nation of Islam, by comparing the twin towers to Hiroshima is a congregation deeply invested in "blaming someone else at all costs."

A unifying message--a message a REAL man of God might give-- is this: we are ALL sinners. We all have the blood of the unborn on our hands. We all have hatred and covetousness and adultery in our hearts, and it is up to ALL of us--black, white, brown, and yellow--to take responsibility for our own sins, to rebuke each other for those sins, and to have victory over them by loving each other in Christ. That's a true Christian message.

But the message you will hear from Rev. Wright, and--God Forbid an Obama presidency--is one of selective victimhood, because, depending on your community, it can be more profitable.

Back to the idea of a family vacation.

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:16:00 EDT

Vacation ads feature a staple image of someone relaxing by the pool, reading a book, sipping on an iced drink, sleeping in the sun, that sort of thing, but even if your life is as hectic as ours, most people really only have the capacity--at most--for a a few hours of pampered sloth. The second day of vacation brings on the cosmic reminder that life is short and that you really ought to do something with it.

"..most people really only have the capacity--at most--for a few hours of pampered sloth.."

For the sports-minded, the resolution is easy. You can golf or play tennis five days straight. You can spend a week elk hunting. You can fire-up the ski boat and jump the wake from one end of Lake Mead to the other. When we first started pondering Riley's Farm as a vacation destination, we even found a Costa Rica adventure vacation destination that allowed you to dive with great white sharks for $10,000 a week--per person. For those who want a physical challenge, there is no shortage of options. (The shark-dive vacation has become a kind of mantric reminder around here, "if someone will pay $10,000 a week to dive with sharks, they ought to pay $2,000 to time-travel.")

Our formal business plan for vacations uncovered this reality in the year 2006: most "adventure" vacations (dude ranches, family sports camps, guided history tours) cost around $1,500 per person per week, including meals and lodging, but not including travel expense. (Note to self: check the standard deviation on this number; averages can be very deceptive.) At any rate, our first attempts have been mixed. We keep hearing from people who want to vacation here, but most people are looking for a kind of pup-tent bargain--pitch a tent, bring along the moto-cross bike, or ATV, or their 40 foot RV--and just kind of goof off for five or six days. That would be a nightmare for us, and for the neighbors, and I've never been interested in having a public campground up here, largely because I can't stand that kind of vacation myself. Here's what I don't understand about public campgrounds: theoretically you are communing with nature, but in practice you may be communing with the Hell's Angels in the very next picnic spot. (A few years ago, some friends camped next to a band of uniformly rotund women in identical tie-dyed shirts who had "no men allowed" banners posted around their campground.) There is more privacy, and maybe even more nature, and fewer freak shows, in a suburban backyard patio than you are likely to find in some regional campgrounds.

To each his own, of course, but I just don't understand the draw of a public campground, unless maybe your RV window looks out on El Capitain or Morrow Bay, but I never seem to find those spots.

When I was sitting around the pool at the nearly abandoned Lake Las Vegas last week, I looked around at the other families on vacation. There was an exotic looking Lebanese or Italian family of ten or eleven, whose very number was endearing to me, as a father of six. There was an alpha-male dad with three alpha male sons, sort of dominating the pool-play with their deltoids. My favorite though, was an Irish looking matron of seventy or so, easily three hundred pounds, and heading towards the pool with a kind of glee I couldn't understand. She was considerably past the beach-babe stage, but she looked very excited about getting into that pool. I wondered to myself how can someone remain so blissfully un-self conscious, and "party girl" into her seventies, but then I realized she was beaming not at the pool, but at her grand kids. She jumped in and started splashing around like a young mom in her twenties.

I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't mind hosting families like this--hearing their stories, getting to know them, sharing dinner with them--and that whether it was a living history vacation or not, there is something very pleasing about the Catskills formula, where families check in on each other once a year and catch up in a setting that actually puts them all on their best behavior. With a few dramatic exceptions, (which are good fodder for farm journal entries), most people come here at their very best--optimistic about having a good time. In a roundabout way, I'm getting to what I think I would like in a family vacation--some vehicle for challenging families culturally to do more than just sit around the pool. I would like to hear all those folks learning how to sing, or act, or dance, or write short stories, or stitch a quilt, or milk a cow, or press a cheese, or learn how to craft a good bottle of hard cider together.

It seems to me that a vacation should have both a daily challenge and then a chance to recount the trials of that challenge over a glass of wine and a fine dinner. People should have the chance to perform a little, to see whether they can make a room full of people learn something from their impressions, or just laugh together at them. If people get to know each other at a resort, it's by accident, but if they have a common challenge they get to earn, in a small way, what soldiers and dorm-mates earn, by virtue of the shared trial.

This all, of course, is the blithering narrative of a hopeless nerd, who, in truth, feels frightfully ill at ease around the pool, or on the tennis court, but I'm coming to realize that Americans need a little push, to go beyond mere consumers of ESPN. We don't have enough to talk about, because we let others do all the living. Vacations should be about heightened, or at least, altered living.

Towards a Riley's Farm Vacation

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:25:00 EDT

One of these days I'm going to figure it all out, but after taking the kids on several vacations, I can honestly say that with the exception of the company of my family and friends, I think most vacations are genuinely overrated.

Let me begin by saying what is good about a vacation, whether you spend it in Fiji or at a friend's time-share thirty minutes away from home: it gets you away, out of your normal routines, and there is something wholly good about the act of standing outside your life, and looking back at it for a week or two. Of course, not all vacations with children are exactly contemplative, but you can't help some rumination about your normal routines when you're away from them. I think the Sabbath is a small version of this brand of escape. We close on Sunday. If you held a pistol to my head, I wouldn't open on Sunday for the general public. I value that time, and I wish more people spent time squaring themselves with God, frankly, because it would make the world of business a lot more bearable.

I also think you find out something about your loved ones on a vacation you can't find out at home. Your physical space is concentrated and you have to pick common routines. We went to Hoover Dam one day last week, and there were times I had to call a halt to family democracy and anoint Jim Riley his royal majesty of the sight-seeing crawl. We also thought that Las Vegas might be recession-riddled enough to afford a walk down the strip, with kids, leisurely, on a Wednesday night. Wrong. I felt my Adrian Monk side welling up in me. I kept fighting the urge to yell out, "oh, the humanity, the humanity." In a mob, trying to watch the heads of six children, "1-2-3-4-5-6," "3 there, 3 there," "2 there, 4 there," was not exactly a calming, centering experience. "WHO HAS GABRIEL? Oh. There he is. Good."

"Look," I said, finally, yelling, into the sea of the world's people, "Jim Riley Family! We are going in there to have dinner. NOW." Sometimes there's a kind of pleasant council of equals that determines the day's vacation plans, but usually you need a strong father figure to say, "that's it. We're watching TV today."

(P.S. I do something to Vegas, just as a matter of principle: I play BlackJack long enough to win a hundred dollars or so, and then I buy the family dinner with it. If you ask the dealer basic beginner questions about the game, and double your bet after each loss, I find I can win a meal for 8 in ten or fifteen minutes. Why does it feel good to know that I beat the Bellagio? I don't know--except to say that it's something like kicking the Devil in the teeth.)

We lost a tire on the way out of Henderson Nevada at noon, (related?) and we limped into a brand new, utterly vacant strip mall parking lot to watch our tire deflate. The Auto Club of Southern Nevada sent out a charming guy who could not find our vehicle, and would not listen to directions on his cell phone, and would not return our phone calls, and who had the phone courtesy of someone transitioning back into society from a maximum security facility, so Mary, and Nicholas and I braved 111 degree heat to change the spare, using a GMC change kit that might have worked for a golf-cart, or a wheel-chair, but not for a big, gas guzzling SUV like ours. I got back on the phone to the benevolent Auto Club of Southern Nevada and told them exactly what I thought of their road side service and another driver was sent out. I got to worrying that they might actually send out the same driver again, and I remembered, in a flash, that I had left a few messages on that tow truck driver's cell phone, indicating what branch of the animal kingdom I thought he might be descended from, along with various other observations about his cranium size, and contents, and then it occurred to me I was appealing to this idiot for help, and he might not be the "heah, can we just get along" type, so I grabbed the cross-wrench and said, "Nicholas, are you with me? Are you with your old man?"

"You're on your own," he said.

They sent out a nice little, pudgy Mormon kid to change the tire, so there was need for fisticuffs, or any Joe-Somebody scenes out there in the utterly abandoned parking lot with the 140 degree asphalt.

Like I say, vacations get you out of your normal routine.

More on vacations tomorrow.

Pixel Perplexed

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:59:00 EDT

Pixel-Perplexed

Taking the long view of history, the ability to reproduce an image and make it widely available is a reasonably new invention. You can thumb through literally hundreds of pages of the New Hampshire or Providence Gazettes from the 1770s and never see anything more than this crude elephant, (right) advertising Hill's Variety Store. (Other than the King's Arms masthead of the newspaper itself, this is literally the only image reproduced in the paper at all for nearly a year.)

Most of us don't know what our ancestors even looked like, prior to the photograph, because even a primitive folk portrait or cameo would have been beyond the reach of most country people, and the photo-realistic renderings of, say, a Copley or a Trumbull, would have been the province of the uber-gentry. Prior to the Renaissance, we don't really know what even royalty looked like.

Enter the age of copper-plate engraving, full color lithography, RGB television monitors, bill-board banner-printers, ubiquitous plasma displays, and ultimately Adobe Photoshop™ on every desk. The last sixty years have been the age of not just the image, but the ubiquitous image, the omnipresent full motion image, the image in the newspaper, the image on your web home page, the image on the freeway, the image in the junk mail, the image on the doctor's office magazine rack, the image on sidebar of your Xanga/Facebook/Myspace page, the image even on the grocery divider you use to separate your Cheerios from the other family's.

The image is everywhere.

For the most part, it's not just a good thing--it's a great thing. We know what things look like now. You can have long-distant face to face meetings without every using any gasoline. Doctors can compare notes from around the world. Kids can see what all the animals look like, from afar. (That "elephant" above threw me for a loop. Until I read the words "At the Sign of the Elephant," I thought it might be some mythological wild boar.) The age of the image has made our perceptions of the physical world a little more accurate, at least.

If you're a woman, you may want to stop reading, now, but if you're a man, you will have some sympathy for what I'm about to write. Guys, we are surrounded, day in and day out, by images of women that our ancestors might only have seen on their wedding night--or in a cat house. I'm not talking about the "blue stuff" either. I'm talking about the non-stop parade of everything under the sun being sold by a beautiful woman, some dressed, some sort of dressed, some wearing only shadows.

Generally, I don't think it's a bad thing to sell products with beautiful people. Let's face it: some smiles are just more winning than others, but there are categorical differences between the way men respond to an image and the way women respond. Years ago, Candid Camera filmed the audience reaction of a group of women watching a male stripper. The gals were cheering, making jokes, whooping it up. It was very light-hearted. Then they filmed men watching a woman do the same thing. The men were nervous, distracted, kind of just gulping and sweating. Only a feminist with braided armpits would argue that men and women are only socially conditioned to respond this way. We're made differently.

There is no real "policy" dimension to this issue, except, perhaps, to pray for a return to good taste. Muslim societies completely cover their women, and beat them if they refuse their ridiculous head to toe veil, and that is as demonic as the opposite extreme of a Bangkok style exploitation. In striking a balance, however, women--ladies, anyway--should understand that the modern western man lives in a kind of Solomonic, full-color palace of billboard concubines, made possible by the technology of the image. We live in Solomon's temple without the benefits. Women live in that same lithographic palace as well, and their fashion sense is unavoidably influenced by it. An evangelical pastor once told me he had trouble getting through a sermon because a woman was so spandexed-plastered in the audience, she might as well have been wearing nothing at all.

The sort of woman who pretends her body just isn't there, who believes her clothing decisions are merely hers alone--and not her brothers' as well--is really a kind of power-monger, and a liar as well.

If any man tells you differently, ladies, he's been drinking too much soy milk.

Joking Joe

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 17:23:00 EDT

Joking Joe

You won't catch me quoting the Washington Post very much, but this tidbit from their politics blog gave me a good snort:

During the 2006 confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the Post's Dana Milbank wrote this of Biden's performance:

"Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., in his first 12 minutes of questioning the nominee, managed to get off only one question. Instead, during his 30-minute round of questioning, Biden spoke about his own Irish American roots, his "Grandfather Finnegan," his son's application to Princeton (he attended the University of Pennsylvania instead, Biden said), a speech the senator gave on the Princeton campus, the fact that Biden is "not a Princeton fan," and his views on the eyeglasses of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)."

Keep in mind, Biden is supposed to add "heavy-weight" foreign policy credentials to Obama's ticket. I guess diplomats need to have, by nature, a high tolerance for meandering, pointless ruminations from heads-of-state, but, seriously folks...

Joe Biden?

Has Barack just pulled a Dan Quayle? Or is Barack playing that part himself?

I'm an equal opportunity offender by the way. It speaks volumes that Joe Biden has already stated he would be willing to run on the same ticket with John McCain. Catch that? "Change we can believe in," apparently means"check any box; it doesn't matter." (Actually, any change made by Barack would make me very nervous anyway: let's see: he attended a racist church; he was schooled in a Madrassa; he couldn't even bring himself to vote for a bill that would have saved live babies from murder during failed abortions. His version of "change," if it ever really were defined, would sound something like a horror flick, so it might be a good thing that he's selected an affable chuckle-head as his running mate. Two half-wits at the top might not be so bad if congress provides a little sanity. (Heah, wait a minute...))

There really is no difference, folks. John McCain received an F- from Gun Owners of America (he doesn't care a whit about 2nd Amendment Rights); he voted FOR Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and he appointed himself final arbiter of Vietnam war records, callously offending thousands of P.O.W. families. He fashioned the most cynical, anti-Constitutional piece of legislation in McCain-Feingold this country has ever seen, effectively shutting down the publishing of voting records 60 days before an election. (John McCain: "I would rather have a clean government than one where '1st amendment' rights are being respected that has become corrupt.")

Our choices this year are between a messianic Bolshevik and a Nazi too ignorant to understand the value of free expression.

Happy day.

America deserves better than these two idiots.

The Virtues of Education

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 15:46:00 EDT

"Education" and "progress" tend to go together in the minds of all fair-minded people, but the bulky broadness of that term "education" makes it useful to demagogues of all sorts. A nation's educational apparatus can be used for everything from improving basic math and reading skills to inculcating reverence for a dictator.

In the West, today, I think we tend to think of "education," broadly again, in terms of a set of skills that will make students useful in the marketplace. We see ranks of nurses and information technologists and medical workers coming up out of the community colleges and state universities, ready to pull down respectable wages and make us competitive in the world economy. The civil servant types talk of a huge tax base, made possible by highly paid, educated,workers. Corporate titans want lots of techno-staff able to design, and produce, faster and faster circuitry.

When you think about it, that's a pretty narrow view of a once grand pursuit--the pursuit of "wisdom." Imagine a town full of people who don't know much more than how to write Javascripts or Excel macros. Imagine a shopping mall full of epidemiologists and x-ray technicians, who live to be versed in the next diagnostic technology and who have never read Jane Austen, or Mark Twain, or the Bible for that matter. The more and more sterile our goals are for education, the more and more diseased we are going to get.

Here are the dirty realities that only a study of history can bring into high relief: we are all descended from utter savages. If your average run-of-the-mill college technocrat atheist could witness the brutal realities of Druid Britain, or Huron North America, or Norse-raiding Denmark, or Aztec Mexico or Stalin's Russia or even contemporary slave-holding Mauritania, they would experience the discomforting conclusion that not all of the world's ills can be laid at the foot of the Judeo Christian tradition. The spiritual ancestors of Jerry Falwell have done more for world peace than any cadre of U.N. technocrats trying to bring order to the gang-rape Congo.

Simply put, the heart of man is very, very dark, and the proper role of education has always been to contain that darkness. Education was originally intended as a moral catechism, as a means of inculcating virtue in the student. In 1787, Isaiah Thomas, a printer in Worcester, Massachusetts published "A Litttle Pretty Pocket-Book," a full copy of which you can read here.

I'm struck by the differences in the range of what was considered morally certain, then versus now. "Fear God, believe in Christ," was considered a universal, as was "Reverence thy parents," and "imitate not the Wicked." The average secular humanist today winces at these absolutes--at these veiled references to the ancient texts. What's more, he actually sees progress in ignoring them, in building a world free from any definition of "the wicked," and he will argue that the very idea of "wickedness" causes war in the first place. But you would have to ask the big-hearted peace corp secularist in the Land's End sweater, "heah, buddy, when those Congo thugs raped all those women so badly they can't even control their bodily functions, was that wicked?" Somewhere, the bearded progressive is feeling the ancient moral tug of his Congregationalist ancestors, and he wants to say, "yes, of course, it was evil," but he has been given a largely technocratic, morally neutral education. That old gutter-knave, Karl Marx, is whispering "religion is the opiate of the masses," in his ear, and he says something completely cowardly like, "I'm not going to get into any value judgments here." Maybe he even waxes a little indignant and says, "look, do you want to indulge western prejudice or do you want to help?"

What we're ignoring, in educating empirical misfits like this, is that the problem really can't be solved--at all--without a spiritual world view. We are told to send nets to Africa, to protect the villagers against Malaria, but we could have let them spray their fields with DDT years ago, killed a few birds, and saved having to bag half the population every night. If you don't have a Western world view, that any human being is more important than any bird, then you end up begging for nylon bags, because you have sacrificed the ancient texts, the ancient moral truths that redeemed the savage in the first place. We once worshipped birds, and cows, and lightning, but the Bible put an end to that anti-human lie from the pit of hell. Secular humanism is making a pagan comeback possible by failing to teach our young that the world was made for mankind, not the other way around, and that there really is such a thing as "good" and "evil."

Most of our civility, as a people, is the result of a cultural memory that included books like those of Isaiah Thomas. Today's atheists are really just lapsed Christians and Jews, who ape the moral instruction of their great-grandparents. Their politeness, their sense of decency, their ideal for fair-play goes right back to the ancient texts and to rules they ascribe to without even thinking about them.

But once that cultural memory wears off, once a charismatic Hitler or Lennin begins to make the old truths seem backward, watch out. A generation of technocrats can kill faster, and more efficiently, than even their pagan counterparts.

Get Me Something to Drink!

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:30:00 EDT

The gospels tell us, in John 4, that Jesus left Judea and walked to a place called Sychar, which by my read is about 30 miles, as the crow flies. For us locals, the equivalent walk would be about from Bloomington to Oak Glen--quite a stretch, considering that Jesus's walk would not have been linear, and was thus probably longer. When He arrived at Sychar, he took a rest at Jacob's well.

".. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. "

Imagine that long walk along the I-10 corridor. Now, if we were thirsty, even without money, we might find a park somewhere, with a drinking fountain, but in Christ's time (and actually right through the advent of ubiquitous-public-plumbing within just the last century), you would need a long rope and a bucket to quench your thirst.

"There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink."

The non-Christian, and in some circles even the Christian view of Jesus, is one of total self-efacement--never needy, never direct, never judgmental, always ascetic and generous and tolerant, but here we see a Jesus who just states the case very plainly: "get me something to drink."

The Samaritan woman has a predictably surly response: "...How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans."

My reading of that response is something on the order of "oh sure, the Samaritans are good enough to fetch your water, but not good enough to talk to, heah?"

Jesus didn't miss a beat when he responded by saying, "if thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water." The banter that proceeds between the two, like so many dramatic exchanges in the Bible, has a way of seeming softer when it's remembered in Elizabethan English, but the woman basically says to Jesus, "you don't even have a bucket, buddy. Are you better than our ancestor Jacob--who dug this well!"

The exchange that follows takes a different tack:

15 The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.
16 Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither.
17 The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband:
18 For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

If you read scripture carefully, the way a dramatist might, you might have more questions than answers here. In verse fifteen, is the woman really asking for this "living water?" Has her heart softened? I sense that she references "Jacob," because she is telling Jesus that she is every bit a member of the chosen tribe, that she is reminding Jesus from what family she springs--and don't forget it. She is holding up her heritage. She is saying she doesn't need any of his high-falutin' ways, but then Jesus calls her bluff, and says, effectively, "very well, I'll give you this living water. Go fetch your husband."

And it's here that the woman begins to falter, to feel her own humility, to admit that, really, she has no husband, or what Jesus would call a husband. She has been unfaithful and, so, even the man others might call her husband now does not qualify. What good does it do to claim Jacob as her father, and Jacob's God, if she can't even be faithful to her own husband? Jesus doesn't get in a Jewish-Samaritan theological debate with her, a long discourse on the proper location of the temple, or the proper copy of the ancient texts. He just says, "go fetch your husband." Like so many times in the Bible, Jesus cuts to the chase. It would be something like having a venomous debate over end-times theology, and then having the Master Himself say, "I'll tell you the truth about all of that. Go bring me the oppressed person you defended against injustice yesterday."

Faced with this startling personal revelation by a total stranger, the woman is still confused, and she has something of a denominational quandary. She says, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." In other words, "I hear you telling the truth, but does that mean I can't worship in this mountain anymore?"

Keep in mind what Jesus had promised, before this exchange. He said, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

We hear the term "everlasting life," and it fades into a kind of bland religious wall-paper. We don't take the actual promise at face value. Every day I get emails from strangers about Carotenoids and anti-oxidants and organic dried cherries and other means of preserving the human carcass another ten or twenty years. But imagine someone walked up to you, a total stranger, and told you your life's story, and then said, "I'm the promised Messiah. I can give you immortality. You will never die. Is that something you're interested in?"

Would you respond by saying, "uh, yes, but you don't look Presbyterian?" or, "by all means, but you don't seem Islamic," or "I'm interested, but will it be environmentally friendly?" Salvation--"life everlasting"--isn't something you bargain for. You sell everything you have, and you buy that field, no matter what the price. If there is some gospel hobby you can't give up, for Salvation, you should reconsider your hobbies.

The tale of the good Samaritan was used to chastise the Pharisees, who saw their own denominational righteousness as superior, but the tale of the woman at the well is a nice counter-weight. She was a Samaritan, but she could claim no righteousness in being a child of Jacob, just as the Pharisees could claim no favor in being merely the children of Judah. Both thirst again, after drinking water. Both inherit the curse. Both fail, miserably, in the requirements of the law.

And both, like us all, need a Messiah.

Heirloom Orchard Progress

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 18:48:00 EDT

Here's what our south terrace heirloom orchard looks like today, (August 16, 2008):

And here's what it looked like on February 9, 2006:


Maiden's Blush Heirloom Apples

Easy Raspberry Pickin's

This should be the first year we market at least some of our heirloom apples. We are not likely to u-pick these apples, since u-pick can produce a fair amount of waste, but you may seem in the cider barn store soon--especially the Maiden's Blush on the left, since it seems just on the verge of readiness. The seeds are brown on the inside but they still some not quite sweet enough.

Raspberry picking is now "ridiculously easy," so you should make plans to pluck a fast quart soon. I'm pondering having a mid-week "gallon mania" price. If you're reading this, tell me what you think. Would you take time out of your week, moms, to come up here and really do some winter-preserve style picking?

This is the first year we've planted giant pumpkins, (see below) and they seem to be doing really nicely. It's relaxing to get under the shade of these big vines on a warm summer day. Be careful not to fall asleep against the side of a giant pumpkin though; they grow so fast, you can get stuck. That's Nicholas wading through the patch a few weeks ago, when the giant pumpkins were still pretty small.

How do you like them malus domesticas?

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 18:10:00 EDT

Jeff Hammond brought in some test apples today, and one of them--the Redfree, or Malus domestica Borkh--is ready for eating. Talk about sweet! This thing is a juicy sugar plumb of an apple. I'm not sure how many we have, but I'll keep you posted.

As of this writing I remain blissfully "Olympic Free." I don't even know if they've had opening ceremonies, yet. Have they? I even boycott Olympic discussions, and to my great satisfaction, only one person has even mentioned the Olympic games to me, and that was by way of lamenting the butchers hosting the event.

Whether it's the Olympics, or "Hands Across America" or "Party Unity," or even interfaith jamborees like Promise Keepers, I can't stand spectacular celebrations of false-covenant. The hope, of course, is that if we all just got together in some big stadium and smiled at each other, the world's problems would go away, but real unity is based on common perceptions of reality, on shared truths, not on shared good intentions. I do like the national anthem at baseball games because the words are specific -- "our flag was still there...the land of the free and the home of the brave." It's essentially a common celebration of a military victory over despotism. It's specific. It's real. It's a standard, around which you can rally.

The Olympics, on the other hand, are a testimony this year to a command economy that rips child gymnasts from their homes for the glory of the Marxist state, even as peasant women are dragged kicking and screaming into abortion clinics and journalists are jailed and pastors are beaten. Celebrating "the Olympic spirit" (what is the Olympic spirit, anyway?) against the backdrop of Red Chinese brutality is just too big a plate of hypocrisy to swallow in one sitting. What, after all, would we be celebrating? Would it bet that a virtuoso 400 meter run justifies forced abortion? Would it be that a 12 meter yacht victory somehow makes up for no freedom of expression? How many liberties can a volleyball tournament make you forget?

Real men--men who can still think--don't watch the Olympics.

Making Movies II

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 12:47:00 EDT

It's a wrap--we think. We may have to do some voice-overs and a wee bit of re-shooting, but we have hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of footage in the can now and all the scenes shot. A project that would normally take four of five researches, an art director, a production manager, a wardrobe department, a lighting crew, a sound man, a props manager, and two dozen production assistants was done by a single director, a worried farm manager, and a score of people who believed in the project, who put in 18 hour days, at times, over a grueling 8 day schedule.

Here are a few screen-grabs from the last few days. (How about that snow in August, heah?)

Making Movies

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:14:00 EDT

Making Movies

You haven't heard from me much, because we've been working on our television pilot/movie--provisionally titled "The Hawk's Head Tavern."

A few pictures:

I have to hand it to film and television producers. This is grueling work, and it's curiously full of tension. A scene is going along swimmingly and then someone (like me, for example) forgets their lines and the establishing shot has to be completely re-run. The light starts going down and a dozen people weigh in on the takes that still need completing. Someone remembers that we need frying potatoes on the fire, and everything stops until the spuds can be had. A refrigerator cycles on and the audio goes awry.

When you think about it, telling a video story is something like grabbing a hunk of the time-space continuum and trying to bend all the light and sound and people around to match the desired reality. It's heavy lifting. Pre-dawn to midnight! Jeff Hammond has really waxed strong at painting with light, and Brandon Ryder managed to get a whole colonial township of extras here, to film a tavern night scene. Mary Johns has put forth a herculean effort on the costuming.

People wait. Tempers simmer on the low-boil. Sometimes the jokes get really pointed.

Anything good though, requires sacrifice. There can be no beautiful recording of the dawn, unless you're ready to set your alarm clock for 3:00 AM. You can never really hope to achieve something worth remembering, unless you're willing to work.

And the strange thing is--I LIKE IT. We're getting some really, really good stuff!

Real Story-Tellers Need to be Angry

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:46:00 EDT

Last night, Scott and I did a live internet broadcast of the Marshall Bo Show over in Oak Glen's Oak Tree Village. Marshall Bo Downey and the rest of the Downey family are focusing, in the show, on the relationship between Hollywood and history in the era of the Old West.

This whole era of internet based broadcasting fascinates me, because I'm not sure anyone really knows how it is going to effect conventional advertising revenues, or content itself. The producer of the show told me last night that the major networks are going to begin pulling their shows off the internet next year, because their advertisers are beginning to complain the audience is already getting the show on the internet. I'm not sure if this is true, but I don't think it's in dispute that whether it comes from either the internet, or conventional cable television, broadcasters will keep offering more and more content every year, and there will be more and more opportunity for independents

I've belabored this before, but the odd thing, still, is that despite all this movie-making distribution technology, good content is very hard to find. Everyone, in every DishNet household, has heard the words "five hundred channels and nothing to watch!" I think that's because the visual story-telling process is still very expensive--and it makes people cautious. Cautious people, and cautious shows, tend to be boring. To tell a story conventionally, you use lighting crews, sound crews, art directors, production assistants, and a whole range of other specialties you can actually rent--body and machine--on places like la411.com. To do a project this way means that every single step of the process imposes an expense that either hurries--and cheapens--the production, or hedges it in, keeping it "safe." Safe can also, by the way, be lurid. One fellow told me his western show didn't have any sexual innuendo, or nudity, and so it couldn't be sold. That's really just the decision of a network type who is taking the "safe" bet on lowest common denominator story-telling over the difficult work of measuring whether a story has literary merit.

Another example: I only really get to see the History Channel on Sunday nights when we visit Grandma Riley's. It seems to be turned over, more and more, to timber-logging reality shows and technology documentaries. It just doesn't seem to be dedicated to what it claims to be--the History Channel. That isn't because history isn't exciting. It's because other kinds of story-telling seem safer, or because the producers see reality-TV trends that make them cautious about their own passion. Once you lose your passion, you get boring--very quickly.

Another example: I watched a YouTube version of an ABC Family show called "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." In the episode I watched a pregnant fifteen year old is debating her options. The advice she is given, on both sides, seems anemic, hedged, smug, but never really passionate. I don't know anyone who isn't passionate about abortion on either side of the issue. I would prefer to see characters who don't hedge their bets to avoid the wrath of the audience. It would be good to have a skanky, Goth-draped teen-witch argue for abortion and a saintly matron tell the child, with conviction, that her opinion of the girl would be broken, if she reduced herself to murdering her child. Whatever you do, don't write drama by committee. Producing a show with a focus group in mind is almost a sure-fire guarantee that we'll see a well-lit, well-art-directed, well-sound-edited piece of oatmeal vomit.

The real hope of the internet generation of visual story-tellers will be to see if directors can avoid saying what they think the audience wants to hear. If you are a story teller, you shouldn't just settle for being a Steven Spielberg--stitching together a slick anecdote by vote of the technicians and the demands of the target audience. No. To be a real story-teller, you have to be a bit of an angry prophet.

Carts, Cottages, Melons

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 11:03:00 EDT


The Peddler's Wagon -- Nearly Finished

New Privies
Photos Mallory Riley

The 18th century hay cart on the right was made by farm carpenter Mike Lewis in about two days, with not much more than a picture of a Williamsburg cart to guide him. We used some old oak artillery wheels I purchased a while back from a member of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, and the end result is a beautiful piece of period work, complete with a genuine oak axle. It will be featured prominently in our television pilot, and it might even work as a pumpkin wagon to boot.

It's a shame the building on the right is just going to be a public restroom. When the clapboard and the brick foundation is finished, it will be pretty enough for a potter's or a dressmaker's cottage.

Summer has felt a bit more like spring the last few days, and the public house had its first cowboy guest. In the afternoon, I saw a horse hitched to the grape arbor and I thought, perhaps my brother Scott was taking a ride, but, no, it was a lunch guest who rode up from Cherry Valley. Pretty cool if you ask me. Here we try to be all period and then someone saddles up to our restaurant on a horse. That's the stuff, lads.

We have lots of nice looking watermelons forming and it looks as though they will be ready in time for labor day, so make plans to include a Riley's Farm watermelon in your celebration--fresh from the vine to your backyard barbecue.

"Heah, where'd you get this watermelon?"
"Riley's Farm."

That sort of thing. The more of that sort of thing that goes on, frankly, the better. Stories sell places. Billboards just start the conversation.

"Heah, where did you go for Labor Day?"
"Riley's Farm."
"You mean this place, here? Where we're eating this great roast beef sandwich?"
"Right."

I kind of like the second conversation better. It could be more natural, but you get the picture.

Godlessness is just...boring

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:17:00 EDT


Director Dan Directs Molly and Sally

Jim Practices his Justice of the Peace Face

Sony Can't Compete with the eyes God gave us. Either the windows look washed out or the room looks like a cavern.

When you write a short story, or a novel, you type the words, "Captain Smith lost his footing near the tavern fire," and the reader fills it all in. The reader is the art director for the line. He visualizes the trip, and the Captain's clothing, and the fire, and the tavern, and even the facial expression of the poor Captain as he rises from the floor, pride wounded.

When you make a movie, someone is thinking about how to visualize everything from Captain Smith's waistcoat buttons to the look of the tavern floor boards. It's an intimidating process, and, generally, I think Hollywood is better at art direction than it is at storytelling. The money gets poured into wardrobe experts who have studied every stitch of the available museum clothing. CGI experts are hired who know how to create a crowded 18th century village market place--as seen from a distance--complete with photo-realistic animations of the people themselves. The lighting gurus extend great towers in the sky, to catch the sun and bounce it, heaven-like, into the forest. Mere images become Vermeers-in-motion. The farther we get away from historical subjects, the more exotic, and valuable, these skills become--valuable not just for the production, but for our sense of the past. It's great that we can get some sense of what a Gettysburg campfire scene might have looked like, or what it might have been like to proceed down a hallway in Tudor England. I can't help thinking, though, that a lot of these bright young people who are so good at visualizing the forms of the past are disconnected from its spirit. Yes, we can give you a pretty good sense of Queen Bess's hairstyle, but is Hindu spirituality really appropriate?

..And the truth is that as much time and effort as it takes to re-create an accurate butter-making visualization of the past (period cow, period feed, period churn, period spring house, etc.), it is much more difficult--far more difficult--to recreate, in the actors, the sense of the culture's soul. It is easier to CGI a village market scene than it is to fathom the spirit of the times. I've met many re-enactors who make absolutely no attempt at acting the part of an 18th century soldier--even though they have spent thousands of dollars fabricating the proper clothing and equipment. It's harder to "see" soul. It's much easier to count stitches. Contemporary Hollywood is something like a un-tutored teenager at the console of an Avid film editing station: he has all the right tools and nothing to say.

I suppose that's why period epics that employ the text of the past itself--Pride and Prejudice, Tom Jones, Vanity Fair--tend to work a little better than original screenplays, unless maybe Tim Burton is involved, (who can butcher even original material very well.) Of course, if you want to see 21st century sensibilities ensconced in old world characters, this won't bother you too much, but I think even agnostic secular humanists feel a kind of dissatisfaction with drama that doesn't really pit good against evil. The odds are that if you aren't thinking about God--about the great weight HE brings to the realities of redemption, justice, immortality, heroism, hope, love--you're going to be substituting a second-rate idol, (sex, violence, music, mysticism) and the drama will suffer. Any play that isn't written by God is going to have a very topical, light-weight, dated feel after a few years, if not at the very outset.

Think about it: if our Colonial tavern were full of men and women who saw themselves as children of God, are their actions going to be more or less heroic, more or less dramatic, than a tavern full of existential misfits who can't even bring themselves to celebrate the rising of the sun every morning?

Cultured boredom might work for Sartre-loving Frenchmen, but real people need God. Anything else is just a bore.

Assuming Misfits

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:58:00 EDT

Assuming Misfits

Flannery O'Connor once wrote a short story that featured a psychopath on the loose, escaped from prison, nicknamed "The Misfit." I can't say as I remember the plot in huge detail, but I do remember that a troublesome, cranky grandmother, revealed to the audience as distinctly unsympathetic, suddenly became courteous and compassionate when faced with the Misfit's loaded gun. The convict, after dispatching the poor old crone, said words to the effect, "she would have been a good woman if she had someone to shoot her in the head everyday."

The image drawn, if I recall properly, was one of of a monumental, nearly unassailable pride, suddenly broken and turned into a desperate attempt at compassion by the prospect of death. (Flannery O'Connor was usually very comic on her way to becoming very tragic.) I can't say that I'm an O'Connor expert, but I do know she claimed to see the world through the eyes of orthodox, (in this case Catholic) Christianity.

The tragic reality of our age, in America, is that we have traded in the high seriousness, and the moral accuracy, of this world view in favor of something that has all the moral depth, and the intellectual rigor, of an Ed Begley bio fuels symposium. We have gone so far in assuming the planet's native nobility that we extend the presumption of honor to even black bears and mountain lions and Palestinians and Saudi Arabians and North Koreans. Failing to understand two truths--there are "Misfits" in the world and "they" are "us"--is crippling our ability to solve our own problems, much less the world's.

Of course, "sin" has almost no place in our national dialogue anymore, but the failure to even put an approved label on an old problem is blinding us to the realities the founders of the republic knew from the start: government tends to get out of control. You need to provide "checks and balances" to constrain the power-hungry impulses of politicians and judges. We don't want to engage in "shaming" improper sexual behavior, but we have to face growing social service budgets to care for the children who are born without two parents. We can never simply assume that civil servants will act honorably. They have to be observed, checked, and guarded against temptation to rob the public purse, or abuse the liberties of the people. Our faith in experts, in science, in blue-ribbon panels is really nothing more than our own laziness on display. Time and time again, the non-expert public observer proves that he knows more than the persons getting paid to know. Simply put: we can never assume good. We must assume evil--if we are ever to enjoy any "good" whatsoever.

This sickness manifests itself over and over again. You can't go online anymore without rhapsodic anticipation of Barack Obama's Berlin Wall speech. The commentary you don't seem to read is that Obama's moral naivete--his willingness to have tea with terrorists, his assumption that suicide states have a rational side--is precisely the sort of intellectual lethargy that allowed the Berlin Wall to stand in the first place. If Barack Obama had been in charge during the Reagan years, the wall would still be a barricade for those starving under communism, and Barack would still assuming the poverty of the east was due to the greed of the west. You don't tame Communists by smiling at them. Marxists and jihadists only return to the fold of civilization with rifles pointed at them.

Back to the essential truths: Sin exists. It exists in the world, and in us. We not only err when we refuse to see the monstrosity--the unprovoked monstrosity--of the Saudis or the Chinese Communists--but when we refuse to be rebuked ourselves. Both Barack Obama and John McCain demonstrate that flinty, unyielding pride of a generation that didn't take Sunday School very seriously. A few weeks ago I asked a business associate if I could talk to his pastor. I assumed he had a pastor. As it turned out, he did, and he was shocked I would ask that our dispute be taken to him. The truth is, we don't really want to have our assumptions, our motivations, questioned--and the reason is we assume what Flannery O'Connor did NOT assume, that we are innately honorable, that we don't need to be called to account. I'm convinced that our culture is so litigation-addicted, precisely because of this failing to discuss our problems before someone from the outside is called in to discuss them for us.

Like the grandmother in Flannery O'Connor's story, we head out onto the road of life, assuming the best, assuming our own virtue, and that of others. We really should be packing heat and saying prayers of repentance, and, then being surprised by joy and peace if we encounter it. Barack Obama sees himself as a kind of real-life Lion King gathering all the peaceful creation before him, when, we know, in fact, that if that many critters got together in one place, there would be blood and ribs sticking out in no time.

Get real, people.

Even Jesus said: "why do you call me good? There is one good, and that is the Father."

Of Strawberries and Suppliers

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:58:00 EDT

Of Strawberries and Suppliers...

Strawberries seem to just keep coming on. That's the basket that Director Dan Shippey and his family picked Saturday--late in the day after there had been lots of pickers out in the field, which means there were strawberries to spare.

From the "beyond belief" department, one of our building contractors just up and decided they were not going to ship us materials yesterday, this after we mailed them a deposit. (The check for half the materials was actually in the mail.) I had been, of course, direct with them, as is my habit. They were slow, unresponsive, inaccurate, misleading, and even a little monopolistic, (and very polite), but once I start down a road with even a bad business parter, I guess I make the mistake of thinking I can "school teach" them into reasonable behavior. Wiser heads call this "pouring good money after bad." Live and learn. I was under the mistaken impression that what they provided--because of the way the described it--was without competition. I was wrong. Mary, the Greek, found a replacement within ten minutes.

My merciless advertising--and the staff's attention to what I call friendly, relentless service--seems to be paying off. We are actually beginning to get fairly reasonable walk in traffic--even on week days in July. We still need to increase this trend by a factor of twenty or thirty, but it's a start!

Big Band Nights -- Summer Version

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 19:42:00 EDT

It's hard for me to be objective about Big Band Nights. This kind of music sort of, well, undoes me. Emotionally. Intellectually. Even spiritually--there is something so powerfully optimistic about it. They start playing "After You've Gone," or "White Cliffs of Dover," or Bill's arrangement of "Shenandoah," I kind of fall into a happy trance, or start weeping, with joy, just to be alive to hear it.

It's been observed, over and over again, that each generation tends to be a bit distrustful of the music coming up behind it. Ragtime was considered scandalous, as was even the waltz when it was introduced. My mom had an immediate, visceral dislike for Elvis Presley. I can't stand rap. Conversely, the younger generations seem to think there is something unbearably dated about their parents' music.

This seems to be changing. I got a little tired of my mom's Glen Miller music, but I've grown to love it, and most of the stuff before and after it, as well--right back to even the somber church psalmody of the 17th century. My children's Itunes include Buddy Holly, Bobby Darren, and Regina Spektor.

The truth is that the broad genres themselves--folk, classical, swing, big band, rock, country rock, country western, jazz--are really just containers for a message that can be either benign, evil, or merely neutral. I still switch off some Rod Stewart when it comes on the radio, because the lyrics are still designed to seduce--literally seduce. Some music, even some 18th century tavern music, if you were to contemplate the lyrics in mixed company, would just be plain embarrassing.

What I like about big band music is that it doesn't seem to apologize for its own sheer joy. It sounds very much like the optimism of its time--a tribute to progress, to coming home from the war and starting a family, to the worthiness of falling in love, and waiting to sit under the apple tree with the girl who was waiting for you.

Compare that, say, to Madonna's "Material Girl." It's a catchy tune; it's lively, even comic, but it's the dark wailing of an evil princess, with a depressing message--love has to be purchased. Consider the Eagles' "Take It Easy." There are few tunes that are easier to shower-sing, but it's a kind of reverie to random bedding as a way of "taking it easy"--"I've got seven women on my mind, Four that wanna own me, Two that wanna stone me, One says she's a friend of mine.." Granted, there is comedy in operation here, and you can almost sense the self-mockery in the language, but if you had to build a civilization based, heaven forbid, on one of only two artists, would you choose the Andrews Sisters or Eminem?

The failure of our generation to think about the effect of music, to understand what it is doing to our souls, is very much behind what we see out on the streets. Just the other day, I read a horrible article about a local former beauty queen, who was razor attacked by her four neighbors. I can't imagine the unthinking pigs who did this were playing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" in the living room, before the attack, and I would wager they were raised, cradle-to-prison, on trash music.

I'm not saying that bad music makes you go bad, by itself, but we owe it to ourselves to see what our music says about what we believe. To tell you the truth, I'm a little sad we didn't have more paying guests at the Big Band Dance--not because I'm a businessman, but because I'm an American. Krikorian filled all of its theaters for a piece of comic book fluff like "Dark Knight," and we couldn't get more young people out for genuine entertainment? It's more than just sad. It's disgusting.

Wanted: Courageous Congregationalist Pastor for TV Show

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:18:00 EDT

I'm sick of the way Hollywood depicts men of God. Invariably, the guy wearing the cloth is a sniveling, little limp-wristed mystical hypocrite. Remember the era when Spencer Tracy and Bing Crosby played genuine men of faith? Remember when Ingrid Bergman, as a nun, taught her little orphans how to box?

We pretty much have our TV show cast, but we're in search of a young actor (24-29) who plays the part of a 1770s Harvard graduate and frontier pastor. Here's what we have written about him so far:

The Rev. Enoch Rust
Age 28

The town’s pastor and pulpit patriot. Parson Rust graduated from Harvard and tutored children for two years, waiting for a call to the pulpit. Until the village finishes the meeting house, he must preach in the tavern. (The meeting house burned down) He is friendly and well-liked, but he also believes in open rebuke. A single man, he is the most eligible bachelor in town.

Are you this guy? We want someone who can play the intellectual, but who also looks like he could chop down a hundred-year old Oak. We are conducting more readings on Tuesday, July 22. Email us if you're interested.

The Riled Knight

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:18:00 EDT

Benita just called me and asked how I liked being the only adult in the Krikorian for "The Dark Knight," from 11:00 PM to 3:30 in the morning. I think it was running on all 14 screens.

"I don't think I was the only adult. There was one per theater."

I guess I am just not cut out for the comic book genre. I like comic book sets, and comic book costume design, and comic book special effects, but comic book social theory is a little hard to take for more than, say, sixty minutes. For Dark Knight, it really boiled down to an unanswered quandry, "to vigilante or not vigilante--that is the question." For the Godless humanist crowd, any breakdown in the system is too difficult to contemplate (since, for them, God is not there to restore order), so the idea of a powerfully righteous crusader--who takes on the mob outside the pensioned ranks--is troubling, so troubling that our hero needs to question himself and even other citizens who would help him.

In a "serious" genre, this might be interesting to explore, but, listen folks, Batman should be able to kick in the skulls of crime lords without regret, with relish even. That's what we're there for--remember? We want a little comic book justice to go with the comic book genre. Action comic book movies should not be made by guys who wonder if it's a naughty, terrible, really bad thing to fight crime.

It's time for real men to make comic book movies--or maybe just real boys.

Oprah Blues

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:16:00 EDT

Unlike the millions who are contributing daily to her media empire, I have never seen much value in Oprah's commentary on much of anything. She strikes me as a smooth quick-edit, a pool of shallow sound bites, and a woman who has to work very hard to chain down her deep hatred of men. A recent youtube commentary on her spirituality didn't really surprise me. She's a new age nut--a successful nut--but a nut nevertheless. Oprah's great moment of spiritual questioning was the day she heard, for the first time, that God was "jealous." The same woman whose iconic magazine wonders why men don't notice their woman's hair style, can't calculate why the Divine Father would be jealous of His children's love? Memo to Oprah: it's a good kind of jealousy, dear.

What depresses me, frankly, is the size of her following, and, particularly, the number of Christians who imbibe this swill without comment. Quoting now from Oprah's letter to her disciples: "..Spirit, to me, is the essence of who we are. That essence doesn't require any particular belief. It just is...The message boards reveal a new kind of tribe emerging—a global community of seekers learning from and teaching each other how to be with our humanity." (Heah, did Al Queda not get the message, or something?)

Oprah's launch into "spirituality" is really just high-minded sounding nonsense. She is right about one thing. We are spiritual beings. We do want to feel communion with something that transcends us, but, if you're listening to Oprah, you want it on your own terms. If you're on your 4th marriage, you want a little spiritual glitter-glow without the nagging sense that God may have a standard for your behavior. If you routinely dishonor your parents and lie to your friends, you want a little non-judgmental soul-massage and a free Oprah subscription at the same time. If you desperately want to see life, as Nietchse did, "beyond good and evil," then you have to close your eyes and walk around like a zombie--because, folks,that ain' t what's out there.

A Pop Culture Rant

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:16:00 EDT

Tomorrow night, I have agreed to watch the Dark Night with Mallory and her teenage friends. I do this, in some measure, out of protest. I love my kids. I hate the mediocrity and the timid evil of their generation. (If you don't believe me, read the "Youth Speaking" feature in most regional newspapers, and you'll see what I mean; talk about half-wits on parade.) I'm not talking about my kids or their friends, but I do believe Lord of the Flies was written for a reason. Teenagers without adults, is something like men without women: civilization, under those circumstances, goes into steep, spear-throwing decline.

The conventional parental wisdom these days is to say, "heah, they're kids. You have to let them make their own choices."

Sometimes that works. Sometimes apple trees grow into prolific bearers, completely on their own--unprotected against the ravages of mother nature. Sometimes you see a big fat un-mothered cluster of grapes in the wilderness. Sometimes you stumble across a wild peach tree decorated with fruit.

Most of the time it doesn't happen that way.

On the cultural front, we tend to let the vineyard run wild--and just hope for the best. Most of the time movies are watched without comment, "Christian" music is propelled across the air waves without critique, and "expert advice" is given from the pulpit with not one qualifying expression of doubt. It's not that everyone agrees with what is being said; it's just that no one is brave enough to speak their minds anymore, particularly within their own tribes. People go off to church, to campaign rallies, to pop concerts, to movies, just to feel like every other beast in the pack. They don't like thinking--or responding to an objection. Why would Barnes and Nobles give loving tribute to that butcher, Che Guevara, if people were actually thinking in America? Why would conservatives not stifle back a gagging load of bile seeing George Bush holding hands with an anti-semitic Saudi prince? Has truth become a slave to the notion that everyone must wear a happy face, non-stop?

Within our tribes (liberal-conservative, protestant-catholic, country-urban) we tend to give our own fellow villagers a pass. Barack Obama gets a pass for going to a racist church, simply because--heah--he's our guy. John McCain gets an F- from Gun Owners of America and "conservatives" say, heah, he's on our team, and Barack would be worse. (How do you get worse than F-?) Orrin Hatch just wrote a song, in tribute, to the guy that dumped Mary Jo Kopechne in the river--and we're supposed to feel--what?--touched? I saw the picture today of the two half-wits, staring misty-eyed at each other, in a way that made me think, "how long have the American people allowed these two misfits to suck out of the public trough?"

A few years ago I went to a Christian pop jamboree with Mallory and a few of her friends. I hated it. The music, to begin with, was so loud you could feel the fluids in your joints boiling. If there was any gospel being preached, it was left in the dust by the driving thunder of the bass and the crashing of the drums. I suppose, in a theoretical way, it was something like music--but there was nothing of the Word to discuss, at all, afterwards, because, well, you couldn't hear the words.

In our family, we have taken the approach, generally, that even stupid movies are worth watching, but only if you are willing to analyze both the truth and the error of the message. We don't watch Oliver Stone movies, because these tend to be complete psychotic falsehood, from beginning to end, but, otherwise, we have a pretty tolerant standard. Watch it. But be prepared to hear how evil, and compromised, and subtle, Hollywood really is.

In the instance of Heath Ledger, and the Dark Night, I'm not sure what to expect. I thought Heath Ledger was inspiring in the Patriot. When he made his appearance in A Knight's Tale, complete with a medieval joust set to "We Are the Champions", I thought, "okay, approach with caution, shallow waters." When he prostituted himself completely, by appearing in Brokeback Mountain, his utter degradation seemed complete, and his careless overdose, leaving a child behind, came as only a momentary surprise. Typical Hollywood low-life. Dead or alive, this guy was a twit--a total whore for whatever role he was offered. There are some actors who achieve great things out of a depth of soul; there are others who achieve credible results because there's not much soul at all, an empty vessel for the writer to fill. Heath was empty, a pretty face mouthing lines. The kindest thing you could say about him is that, perhaps, he was too stupid to know a bad thing when it came along.

So, yes, back to the point: I hate Hollywood, and I'm going because Batman usually kills the bad guys, but if there's any sniveling nuance about how The Joker was really a misunderstand sad little guy who really deserves our sympathy, or how crime-fighters are morally ambiguous, or how princes must be "dark" to be loved, well, then the kids are going to get an ear-full of the wisdom Hollywood is too shallow to process.

More tomorrow, when I take on Oprah--the wealthy queen of half-baked pop wisdom.

Dailies -- Working Towards Something Viral

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:22:00 EDT

No money this summer to buy any cable spots, so this is daily progress on what we hope to be a viral commercial. I hear these terms, "go viral," "viral marketing," etc., and what they really seem to mean is the sort of message people pass on to each other in little emails and conversations all day. Brandon Ryder, for example, told me to check out the flash animation at Spam (the meat snack web site).It featured a comic, announcer type voice that answered questions about the history of Spam in a can. I actually listened to eight or nine of the answers, and later in the day, I felt the urge to try a little fried Spam and potatoes. That's viral marketing if you ask me.

Well the idea here (script) is that some huge production company does a preposterous cinematic epic called U-Pick, The Movie, loaded with all the high sanctimony of, say, a Richard Attenborough film. It could be funny. It could. This little sketch with Jon and Angela would be cut up and splashed in with other moments of high-drama from the u-pick scene and then we need to add a really resonating baritone announcer voice and a compelling piano score. Suddenly everyone sends it around to each other and we get a few more people up here during the summer.

We already are breaking daily berry-sale records for last year, so something viral must be going on--but we have lots of bright young people here who want to make a future someday in the exciting, wild west world of agritourism and living history education, so do you part and, um, get infected. Start laughing.

Not anywhere near viral enough..

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Manifest Destiny or Global Stewardship: Pick Your Poetry

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 14:24:00 EDT

Never Apologize for Progress

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Someday I want to produce a comedy sketch with three men representing different eras of American history, looking off into the horizon as an off-screen narrator asks them questions:

Narrator: John Winthrop, Father of New England, what do you see on the horizon?

John Winthrop: (Courageously) "I see..that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies!"

Narrator: John O'Sullivan, Author of the Westward Expansion, what do you see on the horizon?

John O'Sullivan: (Boldy) "I see that it is our...manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions!"

Narrator: Paul Ehrlich, Author of the Population Bomb, what do you see on the horizon?

Paul Ehrlich: (Timidly, lisping) "I see that...the addition of each person to the American population, whether by birth or immigration, is many times the disaster for the world as a birth in Kenya or Bangladesh..."

When, precisely, did we get so timid, desperate, and downright demonic as to allow people like Paul Ehrlich a place at the roundtable of American mythology? I know he's not a poet--far from it--but this dreary sickness of soul that he represents--the very evil at the black heart of a man who can call a baby a disaster--poisons the culture, and betrays everything we are about as Americans. He's not alone. Al Gore and the Global Warming Inquisition see man, and man's progress, as the problem. As one African academic put it, climate change fever means that Africans, really, should continue living in the misery of no electricity, no heat, and no health-care, since greenhouse gas obsession will mean precisely that for the third world.

This mythology of fear, this malaise, this timidity, this stinking cowardice, works its way right on to my can of coffee, where the importers of my fine Columbian roast seem anxious to tell me they haven't harmed the rain forest in bringing me my brew. They should be bragging for heaven's sake! I would be much more impressed if they wrote "we have tamed the jungle for the benefit of your morning java! We employ thousands to get this can to you at a reasonable price! The back country savages of the Amazon now have electricity, and Christianity, because you are buying coffee!"

Are American men drinking too much soy milk, or what? When did we undergo a sex change from John Winthrop to Paul Ehrlich? When did we start apologizing for progress, for comfort, for learning, for a bigger tribe? When did we become such hopeless, whining little school-girls?

On the verge of paying $6 a gallon for gasoline, we still have utter wimps like Barack Obama claiming we should not drill for oil in Alaska. Just to be an equal opportunity offender, that half-wit Fascist, John McCain, voted against Alaska drilling the last time it came up as well. It has been estimated that our Rocky Mountain Oil Shale reserves dwarf the Saudi supply, by a factor of seven, and yet we are still listening to world-hopping hypocrites like Al Gore and Leonardo di Caprio and John Travolta. (John flies his own 707 around, by himself, to show off his deep commitment to saving the planet.)

The young people of the world need great ideas to fuel their spirits, and, sorry folks, kissing mother earth on her dirty festered toes is not a heroic life's work--it's a step right back into jungle animism.

Where is Andy Griffith When You Need Him?

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:19:00 EDT

Where is Andy Griffith When You Need Him?
(CHP Dimwit Alert)

Okay, so I guess you do need a permit to sing the National Anthem in the Capitol Rotunda in Sacramento. Spontaneous, harmonized outbursts of patriotism--permitted or not--would be nice to see in Sacramento, but after hearing the beautiful music above, a band of nimrods from the California Highway Patrol, instead of applauding, lectured, and tried to intimidate.

Sheesh. I know many fine, bright, wonderful members of law enforcement, but there are a few who are too stupid to work anywhere else, I guess.

The Oak Glen Moon

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:19:00 EDT

The boys and I sat up on the porch last night and chronicled the moon's passage across the southern sky. The original XD footage is really beautiful, but I don't think I could get it onto the internet for anyone who doesn't have a NASA level connection--which includes me. (Long term, we're going to have to find a way of keeping up with all you fiber-optic people down the hill.)

I discovered two things about the sky. First, the moon is a real speed demon. If you point a 14x optical lens in that direction, you can actually see her motion across the screen. Second--contrary to what I assumed--it is not easy to get a picture of the sky that looks like an 18th century version: there are too many planes and satellites and space stations up there. We noticed one cloud formation last night, that looked as though it had been neatly cut down the middle (a perfectly straight line), by a passing jet. Is this possible? Imagine two 18th century rangers, in a film, talking over the size of the British encampment, with the moon lighting up their faces.

Suddenly, a 737 begins its descent into Ontario International behind them.

Reward a blogging moonlighter.
Please?

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Send in the Clowns

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 11:37:00 EDT

As a follow-up to yesterday's Pastoral Buffoons lament, I keep thinking that there is a craven genius in preaching unqualified obedience. We could call it the Nuremberg school of church growth. It goes something like this: "God has removed all responsibility from you as an individual. You can pretty much blame everything you do on those in authority over you. If Nero or Hitler are in charge, or their henchmen, your only job is to do exactly what they say." The believer who follows this theology, when he gets to heaven, really only requires a very good pointing finger. He only has to blame his sins on someone else. By this way of reckoning, Christ really only died for the sins of the evil princes and dictators throughout history. The silent, obedient dolts in the pews bear no responsibility for the bulk of the horror. Pastors are free to ignore the evil around them, because, after all, it's the work of "our leaders." The flock is free to ignore the nagging sense that their pastor has preached a cobweb of nothingness, with no real advice for "tending the vineyard," because, after all, "he's in charge of me."

The movie Schindler's List depicted a horrible scene where S.S. officers decided which of the elderly Jews were fit for a few months of camp life, by making them run around naked in the snow. It seems to me that if you were forced, God forbid, to watch the spectacle of your naked grandparents being beaten, from behind the barbed wire, you would have to ask yourself, "how did we get here? how did this happen?" It seems to me that if you were forced to consider yourself, as a father, watching Jihadists strapping bombs to your loved ones, you would have to say, "what could I have done? How did this happen?"

The doctrine of absolutely unqualified obedience to leaders has a great deal to do with it. From a biblical perspective--for Jews, Christians, or even unbelieving students of political history--slavish obedience to authority is a heresy. The Bible is full of individuals who disobeyed authority, when the line in the sand was crossed. The Hebrew Midwives refused to kill male children. Ehud stuck a knife in the belly of the king and called it a message from God. Rahab lied to the soldiers of Jericho. The wise men refused to return to Herod and tell him the whereabouts of the Christ Child. Peter refused to keep silence. Christ refused to throw pearls before swine. Righteous disobedience is found in so many places in the Bible that only a dolt--or a John MacArthur--could ignore it.

Don't be a clown.

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Of course, our lives are characterized, primarily, by almost routine (but not craven) obedience to authority. We observe traffic lights; we pay just taxation; we endure a lot of pure silliness and stupidity from the pulpit, and from the legislature. To do otherwise would be to invite anarchy, but a wise people, and wise leaders, would do well to understand that there is, indeed, "a line in the sand." Some pastors point to Caligula and Nero, and they conclude the "line in the sand," really, is the moment when their own ministries are shut down, when they are forbidden to preach Christ. Ignoring for a moment the fact that most of these craven cowards would worship Allah if they were commanded to (and one European "christian" cleric has, indeed, already advocated just that), where does it say, in the Bible, that God is honored by hypocrisy? If you help Stalin kill dissidents with one hand and preach the Bible with the other, is there some great victory in your compromise? If you kill innocents during your day job, and run the youth ministry on Wednesday nights, are you a candidate for sainthood? This is really just saying that you can be complicit in a thousand evils--as long as you boldly preach a gospel you are not courageous enough to live in the first place.

But, really, we don't find ourselves in the condition of abject political slavery, simply because, at the last minute, we acquiesced to some outrageous expression of brutality. We reach that stage because we are afraid to offend at the dinner table. We reach that stage, because we are afraid to take our pastor, our teacher, our boss, our union leader, our party chief, our professor, aside, and say, "I respect your position, but I have to tell you how wrong you are about..."

Americans should be more cantankerous, more admonishing, more rebuking. Liberty depends on being smart enough to know that God will have no use for those who say, "I was just following orders."

Pastoral Buffoons

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:39:00 EDT

"The Christian has a duty to his nation, even if the ruler is a Nero or a Hitler.." John MacArthur, prominent Conservative Christian Bible "Scholar."

"..The truth is, the United States was born out of a violation of Romans 13:1-7.." John MacArthur.

John MacArthur won't.
Will you?

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I pick on John MacArthur a lot, not because I find pleasure in it, but because he is emblematic of so much that is wrong with the modern church. He is a great example of what I call "The Great Man" heresy. Believers hear a preacher who seems to get so many things right, who seems to be so non-compromising in the face of secular orthodoxies, that they can't bring themselves to say, "uh, pastor, I think you're wrong on that."

John MacArthur isn't alone in preaching a God who doesn't care about justice. Some folks tend to console me by saying "oh, I get it, Jim, you teach people the virtue of the American Revolution and John Macarthur preaches its evil. He's cutting in to your living." I find that patronizing--not just to me, not just to America, but to all true believers, and to all people, of any faith, in any age, who believe that God cares for His children, and seeks to secure them justice and liberty. The question really isn't just about the American Revolution. The question is whether God would have you take part in gassing Jews, whether God would have you be silent when Stalin conducted his purges, or when Castro had his henchmen imprison preachers. The question, really, is whether God values truth or whether God values falsehood. The question is whether God wants only idiots, and cowards, or whether God values those who think, and those who act.

The question is whether God wants only idiots, and cowards, or whether God values those who think, and those who act.

Typically, at this point, the lisping mystic responds by saying, "but our Lord gave himself up willingly."

To which I would have to respond, "read the Bible." He did no such thing. Even Jesus prayed to have "the cup taken away." He went through an excruciating physical and spiritual ordeal, not because we should offer to die for humanity's sins and blindly obey tyrants, but because He was the only one who could do it. Some folks walk around asking, "What Would Jesus Do?" It's not a bad question. But you have to answer it honestly: He insulted the priestly-class, He healed the sick, He raised the dead, and He died for the sins of mankind. There are just some things Jesus did that we can't. I think a congregation full of believers whose hands are calloused from building a "city on a hill" are far more appealing than a bunch of boring messiah-wannabes. There is nothing more pitiful than a congregation full of anemic cowards hiding behind the sacrificial image of a Christ they can never be, calling any effort to better our world an effort "in the flesh." When Christ offered to die for the sins of mankind, he could have called down legions of angels to pull Pilate limb from limb. It is one thing to be a sacrifice out of strength. It is quite another to be a coward and a weakling, hiding behind the "obedience" scriptures and conveniently ignoring the call-to-action scriptures.

Besides, Christ refused to speak to most of His accusers. Is there anything more infuriating to a tyrant, to a rogue cop, to a corrupt civil servant, to a bribed judge, than a man who regards his accusers as beneath conversation? Is there anything more disobedient? Christ braided the whip and purged the temple. He called his enemies "weeds, vipers, white-washed tombs." He told His disciples to sell their outer cloak and buy swords.

Yes, there are balancing scriptures, but it is that very balance that is ignored by some Christian pastors who have enormous book-and-podcast revenues flowing in from a people who have been told to hole themselves up in their comfortable Christian ghettos. Oddly enough, many of those ghettos themselves don't look anything remotely like a "city on a hill." They look more like a hospital for the spiritually sick. They aren't being "born again" as much as they are being spiritually, and intellectually, aborted by a gospel that can't even decide when tyrants should be opposed, much less how to live their day to day lives.

A woman very versed in "christianese" once told me that the ten commandments no longer apply, that we are so far set free of the law we no longer even need to know it.

"Oh really," I told her. "Do you have a lot of murder in your church?"

The problem is very deeply entrenched, and no, it's not really about the American Revolution. John MacArthur's brat-like babbling about the founders--Christians, after all,who died for his liberty--is just a symptom of the problem. The pietistic, mystic distance of the modern church from anything real is very much about civilization itself. If you don't want to see Aztecs cutting the hearts out of their victims in the next century, or Muslims cutting the heads off your infidel great grandchildren, start telling your pastors to get real in this century.

Table Read

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:02:00 EDT

Yesterday, among the major cast members, we conducted a table read for the pilot episode of our colonial television series. It was neat to hear the way actors hash out the way a line should be delivered. Writing a screen play, for an author, is very much like turning over a family pet to a friend, to see how they take care of it, or, more accurately, it's like giving a pile of lumber to a friend, and saying "do something Craftsmaneque" so that you can see what sort of house they build. A great deal is up to the actor. I'm happy to say I think we have the beginnings of a colonial township.

I also spoke at the Optimist Club of Redlands yesterday; they were a very chipper group of guys, many of whom had deep roots in Redlands. They had stories about uncles who were foremen of big ranches up here back in the old days. One of them said one of his relations would walk from Oak Glen to Redlands and back again, over the course of a week, to balance school and farm work. Talk about the right stuff. It's humbling to speak to a group of guys, some of whom graduated from high school in 1940, and became part of the greatest generation. There's a sort of quiet, modest wisdom you see in their faces.

One of the guys was a young, sharp mortgage salesman for Wells Fargo and he said, "I don't know what this recession talk is all about. My numbers through June have already gone past the whole of last year."
I responded, "Amen! Riley's Farm is 35% ahead of last year too."

Unless you think the Saudis are our friends..

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So, to turn a little commie sloganeering on its head...

What if they announced a Recession and No One came!

Sounds like a good idea to me. Get off your b--ts, America, and start selling! And Congress! Start drilling for oil in Alaska. Anyone who doesn't believe in drilling in Alaska, in my book, is a Saudi-sympathizer; here's another way of putting it: if you like a country that beats its women, persecutes non-Muslims, funds terrorism and hate literature world-wide, then, by all means, oppose drilling for oil in Alaska.

Me Blathering, and the Need for a Viral Commercial

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 23:19:00 EDT

I spent the day in customer service land, which, these days, is something like Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe. You get to hear from people in far away lands, and you get so hungry waiting on hold, you could eat a rat.

Last September, we purchased a Frigidaire Freezer from a guy named Dennis, out in Ontario, California. Dennis seemed like a nice guy, but Dennis is merely one sturdy, solid oak railroad tie in a global railway that includes places like New Delhi and Manilla. It turns out Dennis was part of a company that was bought out and I found myself, on hold, talking to someone in Manilla named "Sbitam." There is a big back story here. It turns out that a warranty now means that if your freezer is doing 35 degrees fahrenheit, you need to document two service calls, not one, confirming that your freezer is defective. The first service call means that a guy with no tools comes out and charges you for telling you to put a fan on the freezer (yes) to see if that will help cool it down.

"Did you just ask my wife to put a fan on the freezer?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Okay. Good. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't hearing voices."

Proudly Trashing
Globalism
Nearly Every Day!

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I assumed that this meant the second service call would be a guy who told you to wrap your freezer in ice packs, just to see if that would help, but this guy (a Best Buy service tech), was very good. He printed out a nice bar-coded receipt saying there was a bad pipe inside the unit-from the factory.

(I didn't meet the guy, but Mary the Greek said he was solid, which means the guy was Gibraltar.)

..so today, I called it in. After calling the 800 number and pressing the most likely option on the voice mail system, I was told to call another number. I called the other number and I was put on hold. Thirty minutes later, I met Sbitam, who sounded very much like a voice-activated robot at first. She told me I needed to fax my proof of defectiveness back to the service provider--the maintenance company.

"You want me to fax this proof of service back to the service company itself?"
"Yes."
"This is the company who told me to fax the report to you. You want me to fax the report back to the people who wrote the report in the first place?"
"Yes."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"We must follow policy."
"Okay, but...I need to make sure you are actually saying what I think you are saying. I don't take acid or any mind altering drugs, and I just need to make sure you are a real person."
"I am a real person. My name is Suni Sbitam."
"And you want me to fax this report back to the service company that told me to fax it to you? Who are you?"
"We are Ultra-Lux."
"Does that mean you are really Frigidaire."
"We are Ultra-Lux. We are Frigidaire. And now you must fax this back to your authorized service representative."

It went on like this for twenty minutes, until I said:
"May I record this conversation?"
Shortly thereafter she claimed perfect understanding of my request--her fax number, and an entire morning later we faxed the documentation to a fax number that I hope is not somewhere in Indonesia.

Anyway---customer service these days is a little picture of global joy, isn't it?

I need to have a good viral (that means funny) commercial, since we are running low on advertising dollars this year.

Here are two choices:

Spot #1

Spot #2

Time Bandit

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 17:23:00 EDT

Time Bandit

Well, I'm mildly proud of this time-lapse video or in Sony-speak "interval recording." This one was taken one frame per 3 seconds, looking up at Wilshire Peak from about 11:15 to 12:30 yesterday. I suppose this means it plays at 90 times the speed of reality. Enjoy a little hyper-reality.

Today's Fruit Picking Test: July 8, 2008 10:04 AM
Crop	Minutes to fill a half-pint (vol.) container
	1.5
	12
	5

The fruit picking thermometer (right) is now up and running. One of our day-campers this morning picked a half pint of raspberries in 12 minutes, a half-pint of strawberries in 1.5 minutes, and a half-pint of Ollalie Berries (blackberries) in 5 minutes. So...a gallon (vol.) of strawberries, theoretically, would take you about twenty-four minutes. (1.5*2*2*4)

Actually, it's not a thermometer, is it? But I guess it has the makings of a thermometer. If 100 degrees (really hot) is defined as less than 30 seconds to fill a half-pint container, and 0 degrees is defined as taking more than 30 minutes--as soon as we have enough data, we have a thermometer.

Speaking of thermometers, don't you find it fascinating how the markets really run, at times, very much out of synch? Example: a few years ago, a lot of people were thinking they owned a million dollar home, and if they sold it at the height of the market--that's about what they would have had in their pocket, less their mortgage. I can remember driving by freeway billboards that read "from the low $500,000s." Now some of those same signs read, "from the low $200,000s." At the time, I kept thinking, 'doesn't real estate have to be some maximum multiplier of the average take-home salary? Where are all these people making $500,000 a year take home?' Sure enough. Eventually, the market started demonstrating the truth, which is that people can only afford to pay so much of their take-home pay for their mortgage, and when those mortgages started failing, and foreclosures started flooding the market, the price went down. Many people believe there was some outright dishonesty going on among lenders, appraisers, and the financial rating companies, and I'll get to that, but what I'm fascinated with is that moment in time when people start to think, "heah, this is really over-priced, but I'm buying it anyway." Real estate's steady overall appreciation has made it hard to listen to "your gut," but it seems, more and more, like a good instinct to at least explore.

Facts are Stubborn Things

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The marvelous thing about the market is that, if it's left alone, it tends to work. It tends to at least identify the price that will match supply with demand, in a way no economist could ever calculate, but we tend to gum it up with all sorts of regulation and intervention. Farmers are paid not to farm. Sales are inhibited by taxation. Bankers make decisions on the basis of what the Feds will approve. Special programs are given for the oppressed ethnicity of the hour. A market for services is created by the government that can suddenly evaporate with the next shift in Congress.

There's a good kind of regulation, though, that the markets need--and that's the regulation of conscience. I'm beginning to believe that the biggest enemy of a working market is a failure of America's corporate elite to take Sunday School very seriously. If you give a risky-home-loan company a triple-A rating on its debt, and you start flooding the real estate market with bad buyers, you may make a little money for your investment banker friends and your developer friends, but, ultimately, you create havoc in the markets, and you dole out human misery by the barrel-full. Sadly, the human side of a business transaction, more and more, is being ignored, because God is being ignored. If you don't care about God, you won't care about His children.

That's not to say every deacon in a business suit is a good bet. Far from it. Pat Robertson said some absolutely vile things about Chinese population control, violating every principle he has ever taught, and I'm convinced it's because he's a big time investor in open trade with China.

When I say American business should go back to Sunday School, I guess I'm saying a more of them should listen a little more closely to the text.

If nothing else, the markets would be a lot more stable.

Put Your Dancin' Shoes On...

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:48:00 EDT

I woke up this morning, thinking I've got to get the Big Band Dance billboard up and rolling--and there it is. If you've never listened to Bill Blanchard's Little Big Band, along with the Harmony Sisters, you need to make room in your summer right now!

The neat thing about this dance is that it attracts all ages--from actual World War II veterans right down to what I call the "Riley's Farm Hip Young People Set." All the farm girls get all 1940s dolled up, and it's something like being on an old MGM movie set. You half expect Myrna Loy or Clarke Gable to walk around the corner.

The food is great, the music is sweet, and the farm is gorgeous in the cool July evening sunset. Even if you don't dance, it's a dreamy evening--so dream a little dream of ________ (fill in the blank), and come on up!

Yesterday, we attended Luke Johns birthday (1 years old). Luke is the son of Dan Johns & Mary Pote Johns, who is our head historic costumer, and has been working for us since she was about sixteen. I talked tech-talk with Luke's grandfather and Uncle, who used to be our Revolutionary War blacksmith, but who now spends his time arranging IP addresses and making routers behave.

There is an ancient rhythm to the world: men talk about how to hunt more game and women wrap the kids in the furs. I've noticed that women can trade talk endlessly about the nature of a child, and men, well, we are trying to figure out the markets, so that the children will have something to wear. Just now, watching my son Lockton opening his birthday presents, I came to a conclusion about what moms accomplish at birthday parties. They may be excited about a particular present they have wrapped up, but, really, at root, I think mothers are anxious to make a child feel wrapped in love. Dads worry about the cost of the wrapping itself.

I woke up this morning, anxious to get all the deposits done. Mary woke up anxious to get Lockton his birthday breakfast. Mary is anxious to plan a vacation. I'm anxious to see if we can afford a vacation. A wife can talk about a house remodel, or additional furniture, in a way that makes a man wonder how many sales he's made that day.

All of this goes on, post-feminism. I remember the first time I witnessed a truly domestic situation among my friends, post college. The guys were talking about their jobs, and the girls were folding hot towels from the dryer. Later in the evening, the guys were still talking about their jobs, and the girls were getting dinner ready. One of them was pregnant, and they were talking about the baby a lot. We were still talking about our jobs--or a way to get out of our jobs and start a business. It's not as though there weren't some Brave-New-Worlders among us. One of my friends married an absolute feminist in jack boots. (I think she helped fold the towels, but I can't be certain.)

Facts are Stubborn Things

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I think this eternal rhythm is just the way of the world, and anyone who tries to change it will find themselves frustrated, or lonely, or bitter--or calling for some weird legislation to bring the rest of the world into compliance with their anomaly. Hollywood tries to do its part, by turning the story on its head--making women better fighters than men, better leaders, less domestic--but that really only works because stories work by surprise, and there's a part of us that wants to see on screen what we don't see in real life.

If I've learned one thing in my long travels, it is that even among some of my super-genius female friends from Leland Stanford's Farm, it's that women essentially want to make a home, settle the village, and find a man who will defend the dream.

The Harvest Thermometer

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 13:37:00 EDT

So far, we're happy to report that strawberries seem to be a pretty good bet in old Oak Glen. Like raspberries, while they're in season, they keep sending out new blooms and offering up new fruit, which is perfect for a u-pick farm. Right now, we have a very small patch, but by next October (the second bloom & harvest season), we should have slightly more fruit than we can sell.

Sample Only!
Crop	Minutes to fill a half-pint (vol.) container
	15
	25
	5

I'm debating a new method of reporting the readiness of u-pick fruit, that might run something like this: we send one of our people out to the picking patch with a half-pint container, and we time how long it takes them to fill it level-full. Right now, we rely on pretty subjective measurements of the harvest: "ridiculously easy," "lots of fruit," or "need to work a little."

The u-pick experience is a pretty good measure of people's attitude as well. You can poll two customers coming back from the patch at the same time. One of them will be all cranky: "I am disappointed; it took forever to fill this little box-thingy here." At just about the same time, another family will say something like: "oh it was lovely. We filled up our baskets right away! THANK YOU so much!"

Capital Blues

I have no Calvinist objection to playing the Lottery, since--you may find this surprising--our Puritan New England ancestors were always holding lotteries to build churches, bridges, roads. A Catholic Nun (Sister Elizabeth) once told me that wagering was no sin--as long as you aren't taking the food out of your children's mouths. Well, I'm too lazy to play the lottery. You have to pick the numbers, read the results, put down your dollar for next week, endure the troubling mental worry that you might have missed a scrap of paper in your dresser worth $195 million, etc. The point of all this is that if I had $30 million dollars I could EASILY find ways to spend it around here. A paved parking lot would probably cost us $300,000. A nice cobblestone road up to the packing shed, another $300,000. A nice country inn up to our period standards--$2,000,000. An 18th century print shop--well done--$250,000. A hard cidery in the old packing shed and a retro-fit with a new septic system, another cool million.

We have been growing by a phenomenal 36% per year, but it's still difficult to get the hard-eyed money men to take us seriously. In the capital-raising world, we are not what you call "venture capital," since we have a track record, but we're not a public company either. I may have written about this before, but in the finance world, there is something in between these two polls called "An Angel," who takes 70% of your business ownership, and then turns over a lot of capital to you for your management. I recognize the risk, and I applaud the virtue of that kind of faith, but somehow that option just doesn't sound very angelic to me.

One of history's great inventions--the joint stock company--has always been very attractive to me. The Bay Colony was really a joint stock company--a primitive, but very effective tool for sharing the risks and raising the capital. Unfortunately, the joint stock company has now become the public corporation, requiring literally hundreds of thousands of dollars for attorneys and investment bankers before a product is ever packaged. Nearly any neighborhood accountant will tell you that you have to have a very good reason for going public, since the compliance measures are beyond belief. (Any idea, students, why we're becoming less productive as a nation?)

I really would like to go back, someday, to designing vacations centered around working a printing press, or learning how to sing historic harmonies, or taking a historic film-making vacation-retreat with your company, but I need to raise the capital.

Some folks have advocated we become a non-profit--but I have to tell you, with all due respect for the many fine non-profits out there--I think the procedural ism of a non-profit would kill us just as fast as going public. Contributions, moreover, do not just "flow in" to non-profits. The big givers want to give to the big institutions. It's a Catch-22. They won't give until they see the number of people you're helping, and you can't help those people, until they start to give.

Besides, I like entrepreneurs. I can't stand the pasty-faced whining of neo-socialist curator types who whine about the danger of things becoming "too commercial," even as they draw their salaries and their health benefits and their pension contributions.

I want a bunch of "City on a Hill," story-telling, hard-working, America-loving, profit-happy capitalists to build a picture of the republic the way it used to be.

Where are they?

More of the Farm Journal -- July 5, 2008

The Son of Thunder at Thunderbird Stadium

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 13:44:00 EDT

Jeff Hammond told me sometime ago he had volunteered me to perform the "Give me Liberty" speech on July 4th at Yucaipa High School's Independence Day celebration. That's a pretty big celebration, with something like 3,000 people in the crowd and lots more out on the street, lined up for the fireworks. I imagine they had so many performers willing to volunteer, that I didn't think it was for real, but then I got a call last week from the Chamber of Commerce, indicating I was to be the last stage performance, right before the fireworks.

I've given the speech quite a few times, but never in a stadium, and I was worried about the echo effect, and, frankly, what it would be like to give the oration in front of a crowd that might be milling about and throwing frisbees and chasing kids and testing out hula-hoops. Well, I am happy to say that the crowd--all 3,000 of them--was very attentive, so attentive and respectful that it was downright humbling for this stressed-out father of six from a living history farm just up the hill.

A performing friend had warned me that in situations like that, you really don't get to see, or hear, the audience's response, so you have to do your best to proceed without the normal feedback of a smaller audience. Brandon Ryder told me, afterward, that whenever "Patrick Henry" mentioned God, cheers and "Amens" went up from various regions of the crowd, and when I was done, a lady rushed over from the middle of the field and had me autograph her New Testament. I don't think I've ever been so honored! (The spontaneous "good job, Dad!" from my kids was pretty nifty too.)

Thanks Yucaipa, for allowing me to take part in your celebration of freedom. I hope I did Mr. Henry justice.

Independence Revisited

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:49:00 EDT

MOOSE CALL

Independence Re-visited

When you think about it, the world's oil crisis is a very good example of why long term economic agreements with non-Western nations is generally a bad idea. The free-trade-at-any-cost crowd would argue that capital, and lifestyle improvements, civilize a nation, that human rights will come, over time, as people buy enough cell phones and Ipods. Of course, when western companies help brutal regimes, like the Chinese Communists, censor the content of those Ipods, or we send troops to Saudi Arabia and allow their clerics to curtail the religious freedom of our own fighting men, it doesn't help, but even if we were not winking at their internal repression, the record is very clear that wealth alone does has not civilized either the Chinese Communists or the Saudis or the Iraqis.

Take that King George!..

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In China, a forced-abortion policy still exists. In Saudi Arabia, an American petroleum engineer would have to camouflage his Sunday School. In 1973, merely for providing military stores to Israel, Saudi Arabia shut down its oil wells--many of them built by American companies. In China, house-church pastors are arrested for not registering their flocks with the state. We've known for the last three years, that the Saudis have funded extremist, anti-Western literature in American mosques. (The literature is literally so offensive, I can't print some of its contents. What I can print is that much of the literature is absolutely unapologetic about the right of a Muslim to kill anyone who converts to another faith.)

Why, exactly, are we doing business with these people?

How long have the Saudi royal family enjoyed fantastic, almost un-measurable wealth? What has this wealth produced? Civilization? Liberty? Order? Contentment?

The lesson of history is that freedom produces wealth. Wealth does not produce freedom. There's a reason why western, free-thinking democracies had to show a backward band of desert absolutists how to drill for their own oil. There's a reason why China has to be shown how to run a factory. It's very simple. If you aren't free to think, to speak, to have a family, to keep the proceeds of your labor--no wealth will be produced. The lesson is so clear that repeating it, over and over again, is a little embarrassing.

Of course, the cynical response is to say that we need the oil. Who cares if we buy it from thugs? Who cares if we let the Chinese chain their workers to the production line? If American engineers get work out of the deal, if western firms are paid to build sky-scrapers in the sand, can't we leave them to police themselves? Are we really responsible for what they teach their children?

Even if you buy the "not my brother's keeper" argument, the answer is at the pump. $5.25 a gallon? $10.95 a gallon? Aren't we really just the wayward teenager on the street, who received the first round of drugs free? Aren't we addicted to the thugs now? Isn't there a price, ultimately, for doing business with criminals?

Reviving the notion of "Independence" on this Independence Day is vital. We once threw off a royal brat as King. It's time to throw off our dependence now, on foreign gangsters.

It's time to start drilling our own oil, and building our own fences.

The Declaration of Independence

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:40:00 EDT

Tomorrow--July 4th--we will be reading the Declaration of Independence in the Hawk's Head Public House, at noon. You can order a fine meal--and listen to one of history's great accomplishments at the same time.

Take that King George!..

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A few years ago, a tediously infantile movie came out called "Independence Day." The producers seemed to think it would have some poetic ring if the exiled president of the United States called for an "Interdependence Day," admonishing all the countries of the world to fight against an invading army of UFOs.

Okay, okay. It's science fiction, and the special effects were fun, and Will Smith is always entertaining, but the whole global, "world citizen" thing is not only nauseating, it's downright dangerous. The sort of mind who takes comfort in locking arms with all of the world's people--no matter how brutal their inclinations--is the sort of mind better suited for making Coca-Cola commercials, if Coca Cola commercials could be produced by drooling half-wits.

Tomorrow, we celebrate Independence--not Interdependence. We celebrate the beneficial disconnectedness of life. We celebrate breaking attachments with tyrants and placemen and ministerial sycophants. We celebrate limited, fair government, over leviathan, capricious tyranny. We celebrate laws over men. We celebrate the true Judeo-Christian tradition, as opposed to those who put "my king" ahead of "my God."

Tomorrow, we celebrate the true, but un-preached meaning of Romans 13. Anyone who pretends to be a ruler, but who is a terror to those who do good, is NOT one of God's rulers, but an imposter, a pretender, and subject to the righteous will of God's saints. Ask Charles I about that--or George III or Sadaam Hussein.

On the 4th of July, we don't celebrate that monument to mediocrity and cruelty--the United Nations. We don't celebrate globalist winking at the brutality of the Saudis, or the Chinese Communists, or even the ridiculous notion that all traditions, all governments, are "value-free." In declaring Independence, we are really celebrating the notion that there is ONE TRUTH, not many, that rights are guaranteed to us by our Creator and not any faith in the kindness of committees or the virtue of the collective. The 4th of July is not about assuming good intentions; it is about assuming the evil inclinations of man--and the institutional checks and balances that can mitigate those evils.

The 4th of July is really about saying there is a better way. The 4th of July is about righteous rebuke thrown down defiantly by brothers-in-arms, when that better way is abused, when the covenant is broken.

We can all enjoy the celebration, the fireworks, the watermelon, and the burgers, because somewhere in time, someone was grown up enough to say, to tyrants, "we don't want to celebrate with you anymore."

That doesn't make for a very good Coke commercial. It won't win any global understanding awards. It won't open up new markets in the slave-holding third world. It won't find its way into any John MacArthur's sermon.

But there will always be evil in the world, and ignorance, and the 4th of July is about celebrating a tremendous victory over both.

The American Second Adolescence

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:00 EDT

Mary and I spend a lot of time talking about our teenagers now, because, frankly, I believe the most dangerous time in life transpires at two points along the timeline: 8th grade and that perilous passage between about eighteen and twenty-six or so. (I define anyone under twenty-seven as a teenager.)

A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Help fight pop culture!...

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In 8th grade, I was vaguely aware that I was making a decision between leading a pointless life of girl-chasing and social posturing, or actually doing something. I decided I wanted to go to Harvard and be president of the United States. It didn't work out quite that way. I received the thick letter from Stanford, not Harvard, and I never heard the mysterious words, "bonesman, do you accept?" whispered over my shoulder at the snack bar in the student union. (Actually, I never even heard the words, "Synergy cooperative row house, do you accept a life of sprouts and hand-washed laundry?" either, but the point is that some percentage of thirteen year olds will descend into a life of thuggery, bad music, and really shallow ideas if they are not careful. Thirteen year olds need to start thinking about a plan, or, in this day and age, they will be covered with tattoos by their the time they are eighteen and preaching climate-change as a substitute for religion.

The other period of life that I see as dangerous is that period from eighteen to twenty six, the American second adolescence, where kids have a measure of independence, a driver's license, and a very strong sense of entitlement. (If the Bill of Rights were being written by the boy band generation, there would be a right to be free from boredom.) I don't think I recovered from the American second adolescence until I was about thirty-two or so. On one occasion, I griped to my brother, Scott, that the family wasn't helping out with our wedding very much.

"Why should they?" Scott said. "You don't do anything for the family."

The words stung, but I had to conclude that he was right, and I've seen this with lots of families--social occasions, parties, family trips are all planned around making the eighteen to twenty-six year olds happy, or wooing them back home at any price. Generally, people who are off at the community college, working, engineering their social life, looking for a mate, are really not part of the herd. They feel no real social obligation to the clan. They see the family as a tedious obligation and the pack of swirling singles as their primary identity--and it tends to make them very selfish. (There are always exceptions, of course. I know lots of people who never even went through the second adolescence, so chill.)

Sometimes, the second adolescence extends all the way into peoples' forties and fifties. Think about it. Seinfeld was a show about urban singles who were still acting like teenagers well into their middle age. Kramer? Jerry? George? Elaine? Out there in Seattle, Fraser Crane and his brother Niles were nerds, of course, but they were both emotional teenagers. What is the Office, really, but a bunch of teenagers selling paper? Have you ever met someone on, say, their fifth or sixth marriage? I can almost guarantee there's a teenager somewhere inside there, miffed they didn't get invited to the beach party. Liz Taylor, for example, never really survived the second adolescence.

You could write a book on the reasons for this, but I think a great deal of it has to do with the mythologizing of youth, and singlehood, and the never-ending hunt for the perfect lover. Instead of building a collective "City on a Hill" (an enterprise for grown-ups), instead of making the old virtues heroic, "Cheaper by the Dozen" has been replaced by James Dean in a black leather jacket, or trash-talking half-wits like Eminem and Chris Rock.

Tom Wolfe, author of Bonfire of the Vanities, was on to something when he said that Americans tend to think, and act, on the basis of perceived fashion. We like to think that we go to college to learn how to think, but it really teaches us how not to think, how to absorb the prevailing wisdom from the master bonesmen. (What else can you call Al Gore's equating global warming denial with holocaust denial, or Ben Stein's experience with the academy on the issue of intelligent design?)

With respect to second adolescence, the point is that the powers that be, in the world of the arts, have made marriage, family, and loyalty into second rate virtues. What do celebrities like Brad Pitt think they are teaching kids when they pretend to be good parents in Babel, but live out a life of betrayal in their off-screen life? (I'm not sure whose fault it was, Brad's or Jennifer's, but you know what I mean: celebrities believe they are not alive unless they are on a sexual/romantic hunt for the next conquest. As one observer put it, when you watch the Academy awards, you are seeing a roomful of high school drop outs. Think about it. It's true.)

Eventually, most people survive the second adolescence. God's truth wins out over Hollywood's, but..

it's a perilous journey.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:47:00 EDT

I was watching an insufferable Youtube Video last night about the need for political "change." I refuse to link to it; it featured an earnest young college graduate who said he had given up a job blogging for the Atlantic Monthly, in order to "give something back." Even his fellow-travelers looked a little bile-gagged by his tale of sacrifice.

We need another fifteen minutes of fame...

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Okay, I couldn't make it all the way to the end, but I did watch enough to know that there was not one single concrete "change" defined in the first three minutes of the video. I'm not sure which is more depressing--the fact that we're off-track in America, or the fact that people will actually entertain that horrendously dangerous notion--"change at any cost." Good golly, young Atlantic Monthly-Would-be-Blogger, Madame Mao could bring change. Rosie O'Donnel could bring change. Even Sean Penn could bring change, but do we really want that kind of change?

I wish we could bring detailed, passionate, rigorous and mean-spirited debate back to the American electorate--make the whole thing a lot more manly. You watch campaigning these days and it's a bit like watching two high school cheerleaders smiling Barbie-like at each other on the surface, and letting all their hench-girls do the dirty work in the background. There are barbs being exchanged, to be certain, but it never gets down to a real exchange of fists.

Why not just call Barack Obama the abortion-on-demand whore that he is? Why not just call John McCain the flat-out enemy of the Constitution (McCain-Feingold) that he is? Obama wants to exchange civilities with Islamofascist America-haters and McCain wants to keep our boys in Iraq for a hundred years if necessary--without even declaring that savage patch of ground a United States territory. Why not, in other words, call them BOTH the idiots that they manifestly are?

If the debate were a little more direct, from the very beginning, we wouldn't have such miserably poor choices. This is an election, in other words, that only a sophomore could love.

..And if you think my rhetoric is a little harsh, you should read a little Samuel Adams...

"..Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plough and sow and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood, and hunt us from the face of the earth ! If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen..."

Or maybe a little Rousseau...

Temporary tumults and civil wars may give much disturbance to rulers, but they do not constitute the real misfortunes of a people.. A little agitation gives vigor to the mind ; and liberty, not peace, is the real source of the prosperity of our species.

Living History Ruminations, Again...

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 21:57:00 EDT

A friend just returned from Colonial Williamsburg, very excited about their Revolutionary City program. We haven't been to Williamsburg since 2004, and the Revolutionary City feature started some time after that. It seems to me I recall a few hobby-reenactors worried about the new addition, actively expressing doubt that it would be too "entertainment" oriented. One friend worried, out loud, very darkly, that there were Disney people involved.

My friend is a very qualified observer and he thought the program did more than just justice to history--that it was full of content, humor, and high spirits. His entire family was enthralled. I don't really know who was responsible for "Revolutionary City," but if someone with an entertainment background helped out--so much the better! History shouldn't just be a bunch of cranky re-enactors arguing about thread counts, and sneering at anyone who wants to know who the good guys were. History should be about finding out the trace-elements of heroism, truth, nobility, and courage in the past and then bringing that gold into high relief. Good for you, Revolutionary City!

The curious thing about many (not all) reenactors is that they can actually be too academic for their own good. Years ago, a good friend who had perfected his Tom Paine impression was arguing with some fellow living historians about the appropriateness of a Scottish medallion that was used widely among his small company of Revolutionary War rangers. The conclusion of the "schooled" reenactors was that the medallion had no historic validity, and, was, in fact, merely a "bicentennialism." A "bicentennialism" is an article of clothing or campaign kit manufactured in 1976, just for the purpose of celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Declaration. If you want to insult a Revolutionary War re-enactor, tell him his clothing looks very "bicentennial." Well, after that stormy debate was over, my friend, "Tom Paine," said to me:

"You know, Jim, I don't care. I could do a better Tom Paine wearing a t-shirt and a Patriots football helmet than those guys can do in museum clothing."

And he was right.

Living history starts in the heart. You can be dressed to the colonial nines and still not be telling the final truth.

Foggy Notions..

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:16:00 EDT

Nancy of Calimesa writes this nice note about our Summer Day Camp,

"...Nate had a great time and offered to forfeit soccer camp to come back in August. Needless to say that is a big compromise for a 9 yr old. He had a blast. Thank you to you and your staff for a great time..."

Thanks, Nancy & Nate! If you haven't considered summer day camp yet, it's not too late. We have a great group of staff members dedicated to teaching lots of new country craft skills, and history, in a fun way. One mom gave up a planned family beach trip to send her kids to day camp last week, calling it a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We agree!

Last night, we filled up the tavern with the citizens of Courage New Hampshire. (More colonial citizens then guests, but it's a start.) I'm telling you, while this program is building, you can come up here and leisurely spend the whole night in the public house, enjoying great food, great music, and eager-to-please singing servers. Someday, the idea will be franchised, but until that day, you can say you visited the public house at its genesis! Be a colonial pioneer!

I have some really great actors and entertainers on my staff, and they stay in character, but I need to learn from them! (I like to visit with my guests too much; I told David Thomas last night, "I stay in character long enough to see if the guests like me, and then I want to just sit and trade a little porch talk.")

The truth is, each attempt to "re-live history" generates more questions than it answers. One of the guests asked us last night "how much money did it cost to cross the Atlantic in the 1770s?" We didn't know. Jon Harmon ran to the internet and found a first-draft answer of 6-8 pounds sterling. Someone else wondered if they had many Quakers in New Hampshire. I wasn't sure. I've read about congregationalist and Presbyterian "societies," and Rhode Island, of course, was full of religious diversity, but...New Hampshire in 1770?

..and then I got to thinking. HBO's "John Adams" has been heralded as one of the most accurate period films of our time, and they made all kinds of mistakes, so...I guess the motto has to be..

Keep trying.

..or find a period way of saying, "Haven't the foggiest notion, friend."

Or is that the period way of saying it?

Somewhere Out There..

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:55:00 EDT

Stanford Magazine saw fit to mention our humble establishment in the class notes section of the Alumni Magazine, in a very nice "spotlight" piece by Vannessa Hua. Thanks, Vanessa!

Many of my classmates donate millions of dollars to the university (not kidding), and sometimes you read things like "Electra Vanderbilt was recently made chair of Classical Studies at..." or "Zippy Van Horn recently finished a 3 billion dollar acquisition of.." It's downright demoralizing. (Vanessa told me one of her classmates wound up being number three or four woman at Google).

My purpose is not to live vicariously through these titans, but there is a small chance that one of them will read the Farm Journal this week and conclude that a small $30 million, no-strings-attached investment in Riley's Farm would form a very meaningful part of their legacy. John Elway, after all, was in the class of 1983 and one of the Hyatt heirs lived in our row house for a short time and I believe a Texas Instrument heiress lived in Stern, and was the love-from-afar interest of a good friend of mine. Of course, capital-raising of this sort would be very difficult, since, I would, of course, say, "look, we're not a non-profit, so you won't get a tax break, and even though you have obviously demonstrated you know how to make money, I wouldn't give up any control, because we Rileys have a very unique vision for the place, but, still, don't you think it's worth at least one or two of your spare millions to create a history-loving retreat in the country?"

I think so, anyway. Seriously. Stanford mega-titans: invest in the farm away from the farm--or at least give me a little free advice. I was a history major, after all.

Cherry Heaven

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 21:11:00 EDT

We walked across the farm (3.2 miles) from Colonial Chesterfield to our Mile High Farm to pick cherries this morning. We haven't figured out a way for you to walk the "cross farm" route safely yet, so if you want to pick cherries at Riley's Farm, you need to take the southeastern entrance. (Use this map.)

This bears repeating--you can't pick cherries at the main Riley's Farm on Oak Glen Road. You have to use the directions at this map to get there. (I'm not trying to be insulting, I just know what happens if you don't repeat things a lot.)

Anyway--if you want to pick cherries, use this map. This map here. This one.

That's Cindy Swanson on the right, and she's been working part time for Benita and Scott since before the turn of the century. She teaches school during the week, but she is the most incredible register clerk in the western hemisphere. She is never off--Never--not even one penny. This just goes to show you that the farm could not really be run if we depended on nothing but Rileys. In fact, if we depended on nothing but Rileys, well...(I'll let the staff fill in the blank.)

I do wish I could walk you across the farm a few miles, just to get the feeling of what a cherry tastes like after a hot, dry walk. (You can't do this, by the way,you have to use this map.) I'm telling you--it's a bit like a very good dream, one with lots of sweet little presents.

Most trees in nature, and in farming, have a kind of silent, reserved beauty; they are the expected mix of bark and leaf and shade, but a cherry tree in full fruit is something like a candy-store. The fruit hangs in dense clusters--impossibly red--as though it were all set out on display by a catering company partial to Technicolor feasts. The red richness of a branch burdened with cherries is a small glimpse of what Eden might have been like--sweet, sugary, abundant LIFE everywhere you look.

You should see it. (But you have to use this entrance.)

Keep and Bear

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:25:00 EDT

We went out with friends to our favorite Aussie place last night, and we had to wait to get a seat--which is fantastic news in my book. People are going out to dinner again.

Which reminds me: YOU SHOULD MAKE PLANS TO ATTEND DINNER HERE THIS SATURDAY NIGHT! Great Colonial food and characters AND music to boot! What more do you want?

Mary broke the good news to me this morning: The Supreme Court actually read the Constitution. A slim majority of the justices (5-4) read the words "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" and decided--this is very nearly without precedent!--the words actually mean what they say.

(One of the reasons I have become skeptical about a college education is that people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg actually completed a great deal of higher education--and it doesn't take very much time in college, at the feet of tenured disciples of situational ethics, to learn that words don't mean what they say. You have to have a very disciplined soul to remember, "keep and bear" actually means, well, "keep and bear.")

The dissent, in this case, seems particularly nutty. The Associated Press quotes Justice John Paul Stevens' lament as follows: "...[the majority of the court] would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons."

Think this through, Justice Stevens. What does "200 years" have to do with anything? Are Constitutional freedoms less "constitutional" now than they were 200 years ago, simply because you find certain freedoms repugnant or out of fashion? Is freedom of the press, or religion, or trial by jury dependent upon the current generation's batch of elected officials? Constitutional government, means, by definition that they are "constitutional," part of the very frame of our nature, and, as such, not subject to a vote. A simple way of understanding the role of the courts--in a republic--is merely to remember that foundational notion: some things are not up for a vote. A democracy of cannibals could vote you out of your head. A majority of Muslims could vote you out of your religion. A majority of legal-service geeks could vote you out of trial by jury. And, yes, a majority of Nazis could vote you out of your right to protect your family, and your country, with a gun.

Rights come, as Jefferson wrote, from "our Creator." Not majorities. Not committees. Not blue-ribbon panels. Not even from justices of the Supreme Court.

Although we have cause to celebrate today, it's very sobering that four of our supreme court justices--Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter--have declared themselves so ignorant of history, and so callous to human rights, that they have freed themselves to make language into anything they want. As Samuel Adams would have said of such vermin, may heaven forget they were ever among our countrymen!

The Tavern-Keeper of Kingston, Rhode Island

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 13:43:00 EDT

In my ongoing effort to understand the lives of New England "Justices of the Peace," I found this interesting detail from the traveling journal of Jacob Bailey, who described an encounter with Squire Case, the Kingston, Rhode Island Justice of the peace and tavern keeper:

Having gained the top of the hill, we put up at Esq. Case's. Here we were received with the utmost civility and complaisance; the Esq. came out himself and welcomed us to Tower Hill, led us into one of his best rooms, and served us out wine with his own hands.

One of the observations of Europeans about New Englanders of the era, is that there was very little sense of some work being beyond the dignity of the proprietor. In fact, French observers were amused to see that tavern keepers were often officers in the militia, and, in this case, justices of the peace. In this case, the tavern keeper himself greets the guests and shows them to their room, and serves the wine himself.

Dinner being ready, we sat down, and had everything in the best order, with the most genteel attendance. We found the Esq. to be a prodigious loquacious gentleman. Among the rest of his discourses, he told us that all the gentlemen that traveled the road from South Carolina to Piscataqua, had heard of his fame, and made his house a stage, and by a few subtle hints, gave us to understand that he was a Justice of the Peace.

The following may sound like an obvious observation, but we have a tenancy to interpret everyone in the past as though they were cut of the same cloth. We expect uniform behavior, but tavern keepers were as different from each other then, as they are now. In fact, corporate hotel and tavern keeping has become much more uniform than it was in the 18th century. This guy--Squire Case--was a talker. You get the sense that he liked to sound his own horn as well.

After dinner was over, we rose from the table, he clasped his wife round the neck and kissed her, and going into our room, he entertained us with a long relation concerning the family of the Browns...

It's hard to tell exactly how to take this. Was a kiss in public an unusual thing--and so worthy of note? Was Jacob Bailey merely recording that the tavern keeper felt a little giddy with the wine? In any case, it give me ample pre-text to kiss my wife in public. (It also tells me whether or not Mary is reading the farm journal.)

Bailey goes on to describe a particularly gruesome sight that speaks directly to crime & punishment in the colonies:

...and then [Squire Case] offered to wait upon us down to the eastern part of the hill, to see a man that hung there in gibbets, but we, excusing the matter, went ourselves to the bottom of the hill, and there beheld the sorrowful sight. The man had been there three years already, and his flesh was all dried fast to his bones, and was as black as an African's. The crimes for which he was thus exposed were robbery and murder. He was taken in the southern parts of Long Island with some indisposition, and being in a strange place, one Jackson, a leather merchant, traveling with his horse, found him and took pity on him, and being on his way to Rhode Island, bore all his expenses, and treated him with all the tenderness of a father, for near one hundred and fifty miles, till he arrived at South Kingston, where, being together about the dusk of the evening, near the great Quaker meeting-house, he took up a stone, and with it struck him down. Jackson begged his life, and that he might, and welcome, take all his wealth ; but he cursed and then fell upon him, and in a few minutes made full despatch of his innocent patron ; thus we have at once an horrid instance of ingratitude. After we had looked at the sorrowful spectacle a long time, we traveled up the hill with some difficulty. Being returned to Case's, we paid our reckoning, and set out. ..

This is the second instance I've read of a criminal's body being hung from the gallows, for years on end. (The other can be found in David Hackett Fischer's book, Paul Revere's Ride.) "Gibbets," by the way, is another word for gallows--an upright post built for hanging a person.

I've read colonial newspapers for many years now, and contrary to what this example might imply, there really aren't many stories about crime and punishment.

We should, perhaps, ponder that. The "modern" age would look at this story and conclude that the criminal was due for a little anger management, or a little rehabilitative incarceration, or an examination of his mental health and his family history. There would be public outrage, of course, and the media would build an audience based on that outrage, but public officials (the "peace-keepers") would be buried in their own lucrative, mind-numbingly complex process. Thousands of billable hours would be chalked up against the county ledger by attorneys, private investigators, and therapists--to say nothing of the clocked hours by policemen, social workers, court officials, and jailors.

But no citizen would ever pause on the roadside and look up to see the just rewards of the wicked. No father would ever be able to say, sadly, to his son, "that's what happens to you, when you choose evil over good."

We've become too civilized for that--and we have a lot more crime to show for our advanced methods.

Riley's Farm Journal

Red in Tooth and Claw

Ollie Stone and the Road to Hell

Bearded Dragons and the like

When Man Measures Up to Myth

Really Random Riley

Molly Farr "Sees" The Future

The Death of Certainty II -- Who Owns Me?

More Funerals for Certainty

The Tedious Obligation of Repeating the Truth...

Wants, Needs, Desires .. and Where Fall Fits into that Whole Thing

Cider Time

Mountaintop Dreaming

Riley's Farm Journal June 30 July 15, 2009

Riley's Farm Feed Summary June 30 - July 15, 2009

Riley's Farm Journal June 20-29, 2009

Riley's Farm Feed Summary June 20-29, 2009

Riley's Farm Journal June 14-19, 2009

Summer, Town Crier, Weddings

Summer

On Behalf of Goats

Could I have a word with you?

Showers, Constitutions

Early Summer Mist

Taking a Constitutional

Riding Weather, A Brutal Modern Secret Truth

Memorial Day II

Riding Weather

A Brutal Modern Secret Truth

The Real Truths are Ancient, Part I

Strawberry News

The High-Minded Fence Straddle

Wedding or Gang Initiation?

Sweet Land of Liberty and License

Family Night

Their Horsely Nature

It's May, It's May...

Constitutionally Speaking...

Wedding Pictures

Beauty Contests, Fine Manicured Lawns, Panic

Blast from the Past

Seniors &The Sorry Reality of Conflict

More Wine, Less Whine

Less Screens, More Scenes

Anniversaries II

Black Angus

International People-Hating Day

Tea Parties Now and Then

Up on Cripple Creek, She Sends Me..

So Many Channels...

The Smell of Anschluss in the Morning

Conspiracy Theory

Why Truth Beats Fiction

All I need is loving you and ...

Father Knows Best

Breakfast in the Colonies

Fifes & Pianos & Music & Such...

The Hard Loving, Hard Living Fellowship

The Swift Economy of Colonial Justice

The Outlandish Expense of Justice

A Little Patrick Henry in the Evening

Someone to Stand Up for the Bad Guys -- Is the Church Doing Anything, Anywhere?

Blood Loyalty

An Evening, at least, in the Colonies

St. Patrick's 2009

When A Dream is Waking...

Let's Just See Already..and Operation Kill Market Garden

HR 875 -- Operation Garden Kill

A Little Beef

Searching for Courage

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

Anniversaries

The "Near" St. Patrick's Day Ball

Camp Revolution 2009

Up Early, Thinking About the War...

George Washington Will Dine HERE February 28th

Random Riley Research

Home Church

The Weary Warrior Returns

Let us Hope 'Ideology' Keeps Getting in the Way

Riley's Farm Feed Summary
June 30 - July 15, 2009