In The Amish Way, the authors describe patience as one of the key characteristics of Amish life. The lessons of patience are built into the structures of their lives—even the church services are three hours long, with one twenty-minute hymn that always precedes the preaching. I will admit to a certain amount of anxiety as we await the huge snowstorm to hit here. We’ve lived through worse, to be sure. Last night we were remembering one storm that hit early in our marriage.

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“The Real Reasons Your Appliances Die Young,” via @isaacgreene. It’s not just planned obsolescence. It’s also government regulations aimed a lower energy efficiency people just wanting something new price wars the inevitable breakage that comes with higher technology The writer also says that useful lives of appliances may not have decreased as much as you’d expect. Her advice if you want repairability and durability is either go dirt cheap or high end.

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There’s a turn of phrase in Colter Wall’s “1800 Miles”: “we don’t got these kinds of cliques where I was grown.” We don’t normally talk about humans being “grown.” Maybe we should? Tell me about your terroir. Because I have never separated myself from my home neighborhood, I cannot identify myself to myself apart from it. I am fairly literally flesh of its flesh. It is present in me, and to me, wherever I go.

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Today we’ll be burying Rachel’s grandpa Joe. With his death, all of our grandparents are gone. Rachel said this week, “Everyone moves up a notch in the pecking order now.” Joe had an enviable death. He was visiting with Rachel’s dad and another friend of his. It had been a really good day. He had been looking at the calendar of day trips put on by his assisted living facility, planning to go on one.

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Here in the heart of IU country, it would be hard to overstate the excitement about the football championship game on Monday. It’s been building all season. I am perpetually uninterested in sports, but even I started watching as they neared the end of the regular season undefeated. For those who don’t know: Indiana University has traditionally been a basketball and soccer school. As of two years ago, they had the highest number of losses for any Division 1 football team in history.

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This morning I read a section in The Amish Way discussing the prohibition of business on Sunday and it reminded me of a similar practice in the Holiness churches I grew up in. The Holiness people lived by a strict set of behavioral and clothing rules they called the holiness standards. Not Amish-level strict, but they made folks noticeable. These were (nearly) universal and violation of the standards was considered sin.

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Byung-Chul Han is very quotable. From Psycho-Politics: Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon isolated inmates from each other for disciplinary purposes and prevented them from interacting. In contrast, the occupants of today’s digital panopticon actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves. That is, they collaborate in the digital panopticon’s operations. Digital control society makes intensive use of freedom. This can only occur thanks to voluntary self-illumination and self-exposure (Selbstausleuchtung und Selbstentblößung).

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