I’ve added “The Owens House” as a blog category to contain all posts about the history of our house. This will interest exactly one reader of this blog (Rachel)–who will also not like the fact that I’ve called it the Owens House. But I like it, and it’s my blog, so there.


I recently wrote a bit about the Schroers, who were the second family to live in our house. Over the weekend, there was a tour of some of the local historic churches and one of them was First Presbyterian, where Dr. Schroer was a deacon. We definitely wanted to go to that one because we knew from this news clipping that his wife and daughter donated a baptismal font after his death:

Auto-generated description: A group of men stands around a newly dedicated baptismal font, with one man holding a draped cloth covering it.

Thankfully, it was still there:

Auto-generated description: A wooden baptismal font with a hinged lid stands in a church setting, partially surrounded by greenery. Auto-generated description: A wooden surface features a plaque dedicated to Dr. William H. Schroer, presented by his wife and daughter on June 30th, 1957.

We were glad to be able to give the members of the church a bit more background information on their baptismal font in exchange for adding a couple of images to our house lore.


What if Trump isn’t lying so much as attempting to shape reality around himself? We know he was influenced by Norman Vincent Peale. It wouldn’t be far from that to something like New Thought. UPDATE: See here for an article linking Trump with New Thought.


Alan Jacobs:

I cannot, of course, provide documentary proof for that claim. But as the Marxists used to say I believe it is no accident that the shaking of the foundations of the global economy and “the longest period of declining real incomes in recorded economic history” happened just as the iPhone was taking serious hold on the imagination of the developed world, and Facebook and Twitter were becoming key components of everyday life in that world. On your smartphones you can get (a) a stream of prompts for visceral wrath and fear and then (b) games and distractions that accomplish the suddenly-necessary self-soothing. Between the wrath and fear and the subsequent soothing, who can remember what happened last week, much less ten years ago? Silicon Valley serves the global capitalist order as its Ministry of Amnesia. “What is it I was so concerned about?”


We got all festive today! This morning we cut our Christmas tree and decorated it. This is our second year with a live tree and I think we’re officially converts. We also set up a Yule space (pictured is the Yule log centerpiece). We’ve been looking into some Yule traditions and developing a plan.


Good essay from @tinyroofnail:

But here again Farmer stands out as an example. He did not begin by trying to change the world, but by applying himself to something relatively small. Whether in Haiti or in downtown Augusta, each of us can be inspired to do the same.


Jamie Dimon says AI will lead to shorter work weeks. We’ve heard this one before. Screw you, Jamie Dimon.


Watching the turmoil of my 78 year old mom has made me utterly certain that the doctrine of eternal, conscious torment in hell preached by fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity is cruel. I live and breathe religion and religious ideas, but that one is dangerous and wicked.


Wendell Berry:

This book, like several others I have written, is intended as a part of a public conversation about the relationship of our lives, and of our communal and economic life, to the lands we live from. That no such public conversation exists presently, or has existed for the last sixty or seventy years, has never been, and is not now, an obstacle to my “contribution.”


Going to the store on a Saturday with some small plumbing part in hand always makes me think of my dad. Of course, now I’m going to Lowe’s instead of the little hardware store in Oolitic but, still, a good memory. The smell and feel of those classic hardware stores was wonderful.