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Yes, I'm Judging You, and It is Not Pretty

The most deeply troubling hot take I have seen increasingly from young couples, even from some people I care about, is that it is ultimately no business of anyone else whether or not one chooses to procreate. The decision to remain child free and do what is right for you is yours alone, and has no bearing on and is not the business of other people. Depending on what source you draw from, the average cost of raising a child is somewhere between 300Gs and half a million to adulthood. I think that number is a bit high, even at the low end, but I will let the experts be the experts. Although private school tuition will do its best to make a liar of me. So for my family with four beautiful little girls I will spend an extra decade of wages and countless hours of parental care to bring these children to maturity, and to raise them as contributing members of society. I will take fewer vacations. I will have fewer nice things. I will see far fewer nights of full sleep. Your end of the bargain ...
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That Letter Never Came

The masters of the world are born that way. Andrew Carnegie started as a bobbin boy--a poorly paid and often dangerous job. The kind of job that gets mentioned in the chapters between the triangle shirtwaist fire and Sacco and Vanzetti, but right before Upton Sinclair rides in on a white stallion. Perhaps not exactly the hunger games, but an unlikely place from which to become a notorious industrialist and philanthropist (I mean books, seriously, if he actually loved the people he would have given them healthcare).  Napoleon was a junior officer from a provincial backwater. His family were political dissidents, and thus he started his career with a dubious anti-connection: with doubts of his ultimate abject loyalty to the republic and the revolution. And yet he became the most formidable warrior king the world has ever seen. The greatest general since Sobutai. The greatest law giver since Hammurabi. The Corsican Ogre, deserving of the mythological appellation for his near supernatu...
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The Fine Line Between Creativity and Bartok

My darling Emma is like a sedulous little truffle pig for current events, especially those musky tidbits that stir one to indignation. One of today's offerings was due to the anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 coptic christians in Libya. They were kidnapped and beheaded on video by the Islamic State (IS) for their refusal to renounce their faith. They died with a bold confession on their lips. Scripture is clear about what awaits them; a martyrs crown and the wedding feast of the lamb. Heck, even Pope Frank said as much. But "not so fast," say the forces of internet trad catholicism. "Don't think they are getting in that easy." You see, these coptic christians are not in communion with the church of Rome, and don't we all know from the canons that a martyr can only be one who is in communion with Rome? These were schismatic heretics; one can hardly know if they make it in. The split was at Chalcedon. Both Rome and the copts rejected nestorianism (real he...
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They Break Your Idols

Sorry about the hiatus. I'm sure you were scared that I had gone to the corner store for milk and cigarettes and would not return for years, as I have done in the past. Fortunately for you, I did not go to the corner store, but to Philadelphia, and so I have returned in a timely manner. Philadelphia was great, but coming home was better. Earlier today I was out walking with my little ladies. We walked to the park to inspect the partially frozen and rising river. We visited the playground where the girls played that they were giant spiders on the climbing ropes, captains of a ship at sea in a storm, and giggled maniacally as I sent them down the little zipline thing, which actually looks pretty fun. We walked through the gardens, where the girls speculated about what kind of flowers would be there, when spring would come, and quizzed me about what my favorite flowers were. (They are peonies, followed by dahlias, and then Snapdragons, although I also have a fondness for gerbera daisi...
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Back in My Day

We hear all the time about the childhood that children no longer get to have. "Back in my day," the opinion piece will begin (even if exactly those words were not used), "we we run out the front door at dawn and wouldn't come back in until it was dinner time." We hear this, because we can all kind of recognize that we are in the era of the ascendancy of the tablet, and of the tablet kid. Kids, like adults, have been captured by screens, and one just does not see possibly dangerous mobs of children roving the neighborhood as happened in ye olden days. The golden childhood of the nineties is passed. So the lament so often goes. I think (yes, another 'pinion) that this has a lot less to do with screens and laziness than it does with chemistry. Yes, that's right, son, chemistry. You see, children are fissile material. A single child by itself is generally an inert lump, putting off little energy, save to whine about boredom. Parents, being only mortal, hear ...
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The Coming of the Superb Owl

I rarely watch televised sport, but I am about to host my family super bowl party in the same way I do each year. In this season of life, a season with small children where my weekends are as precious as they will ever be, I cannot make time for it on a regular basis. There are too many competing priorities, and it just does not rise to the top. But as you might guess from the fact I'm hosting a super bowl party, I would not say that it is without value. I am not part of the crowd who looks down on 'sportsball'. I absolutely know what so many see in it, and believe that there is real good one gets out of sport as a spectator. Especially out of complex sport, like baseball or football. Sport is more than just physical contest. It is a battle of wits, and it is a satisfying mental exercise to put yourself in the shoes of the coach, the QB, the pitcher and try to diagnose what you think is the right plan of attack. This  level of enjoyment requires a deeper knowledge of the sp...
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Viva Pinata

See, this is exactly what I am talking about. The first three days of the fast were a relative breeze. Yes, getting up an hour earlier and finally reinstituting my workout took a little stretching, but my relationship with food has been such that dropping brekkie is not big deal, nor avoiding snacking. TV, social media, and video games are all dispensible pleasures. But today is hard, because today was actually my first bad day where I was also keeping disciplines. I had a bad day at work. Not the kind of bad day that has life altering consequences, but just a steady day of little defeats that added up to a day that some parts of me wished I had not logged on for. I've had plenty of days like this in the past--I imagine we've all had a few. But what I am patently unused to is processing this kind of day without any distractions, and with the gentle pressure of having new disciplines and deferred comforts. What I can't escape is the constant intrusive need to analyze the pro...
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