Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.

Saving this here for future me.

I’m trying to remember a few lines of some piece of Christian devotional writing that has a structure like “[some bad or difficult thing exists] therefore we are saved by [Christian virtue].” I feel like one line ends “therefore we are saved by hope.” It’s driving me crazy. Halp!

The future is invisible; we will find our way along the way.

Projects update: pond, F150

I used to post notes about what I was working on and I’d like to get back into that habit. Not because it’s particularly noteworthy—just because I like revisiting these memories. Pond The big job this weekend was to get the pond ready for the year. Rachel did most of that work on Saturday while I piddled with other things, like building a new sugar snap pea trellis in one of the raised beds.

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File this under “I want to believe”: How AI Slop will Spark the Next Human Renaissance (YouTube video). He references another person’s video (also worth watching) that predicts this renaissance will happen in the 2030s. But this will be counter-productive if human-made becomes a “luxury good.”

My background and the strange world of "total work"

Mentioning “total work” earlier today has me thinking again about how strange our contemporary work culture seems to me. Strange, I think, because I never really came through the usual acculturating institutions. A bit about my background. I come from a working class lineage, through my grandparents and beyond. Well, that’s being generous about my dad’s family, which might be better described as “working-when-not-drunk class.” There are some professionals here and there among the aunts and uncles and cousins but my direct line is all laborers, secretaries, and cooks (not chefs!

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Prestige dramas are too much work

Adam Smith, “The Work of Leisure” (Local Culture, Fall 2025): For Snyder the main obstacle to the rebirth of leisure is our devotion to work. We’re so devoted to work that even our play is workaday, since play for us is recuperation for work, and “we are still toiling when we are watching television,” as Snyder notes. Watching TV is a necessary evil, like work. It’s “like recovering from an injury.

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Sally Fallon Morell talking about scrapple, a breakfast food made from pork bits. I actually came across this at an Amish grocery store recently but couldn’t remember the name until I came across this article. Has anyone had it?

The Haunted Smart House Lights turn on and off randomly; speakers in different locations of the house start blasting the Everly Brothers. And none of us knows how to fix it.

Memory verses for localists: “And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.” (1 Thess 4:11-12)