Lift Up Your Hearts!

Suspects arrested in baby formula theft ring. That was the headline for an article in today's Orlando Sentinel.

A total of 21 men and women in Orange, Osceola and Polk counties face charges of stealing hundreds of cans of baby formula from local shops....[T]he men and women facing charges are undocumented immigrants from Honduras and Mexico. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been alerted and immigration holds have been placed on the suspects....Investigators said the suspects walked into local supermarkets, grabbed cans of baby food, stuffed them into large plastic bags and left the store without paying for the merchandise. Nearly 2,000 stolen cans of baby formula were then stashed in a storage unit....Reports show the suspects would ship the baby formula out-of-state for sale on the black market.

I understand black markets for avoiding high taxes (cigarettes and booze), for copyright infringement (pirated DVDs), for illegal items (cocaine), and in situations where price-fixing rules distort the market.  But baby formula?  Who could possibly sell baby formula for a price that would make it worthwhile risking jail and/or deportation?  Who would buy black market baby formula when it's plentiful in every grocery store?  What am I missing here?

"What is VPK?" asks an article in our city's magazine.

Pre-math, pre-reading and social skills.  How do I teach my child all this information before she enters kindergarten?  Many parents used to ask themselves that precise question not too long ago.  However, for the past four years, concerned parents have decided to enroll their children in what is called VPK, or voluntary pre-kindergarten education....VPK is free [that is, tax-funded]...regardless of family income.

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Two of my favorite bloggers have written recently about the perils of allowing ourselves to be too busy.  (More)

The Gridlock Economy, by Michael Heller (Basic Books, New York, 2008)

Peter V.—who now keeps most of his insightful commentary behind the Facebook wall, so I can't provide a link—alerted me to The Gridlock Economy, which I touched on in the first Casting the Net.  Since then I obtained the book through Interlibrary Loan, and thanks to my Lenten disciplines, finished reading it last night.  Now I can get the library monkey off my back and return this long-overdue book.  (To be fair to them, the library has not been nagging me about it. But I was brought up to view an overdue library book as an unpaid debt, and my own conscience does quite enough nagging.  In maturity—I think once I passed the half-century mark—I came to realize that keeping a book a little longer and paying a fine was an acceptable strategy and more reasonable than returning it unfinished.  But I still imagine that I'm keeping hoards of folks in durance vile by limiting their access to the book.) (More)

I hope this doesn't violate blog etiquette, but I'm going to repeat a conversation an anonymous Canadian and I have been having over at East of Eden, on the post I mentioned in Casting the Net, Vol. 6.  I'm hoping she'll continue the discussion here, because (1) the blog owner is taking a break for Lent and I don't want to overwhelm her post while she is gone, and (2) I think several of my readers would enjoy the conversation and have something to contribute to it.  If the best part of overseas travel is being with family and friends, the second best is the opportunity to meet other points of view.  I'd welcome a Canadian viewpoint around here.

The original post is here, and I've excerpted below our conversation so far.  (More)

It's time once again to clean up my "blog about this" list with a shovel rather than a spoon.  Here are some treasures scooped up from various places. (More)

As with most First Things articles, David B. Hart's 2004 essay Freedom and Decency is intellectual, dense, long, and not easy going.  But—again like most First Things articles—it is well worth the effort.  (Hat tip to John C. Wright.  Who says science fiction writers can't be deep thinkers?)  What earns the article its own post rather than a brief mention in my "Casting the Net" series is the following extraordinary paragraph, which leaps from the somewhat dry erudition with the shock of a striking panther.

I am not convinced that we are in any very meaningful sense in the midst of a “culture war”; I think it might at best be described as a fracas. I do not say that such a war would not be worth waging. Yet most of us have already unconsciously surrendered to the more insidious aspects of modernity long before we even contemplate drawing our swords from their scabbards and inspecting them for rust. This is not to say that there are no practical measures for those who wish in earnest for the battle to be joined: homeschooling or private “trivium” academies; the disposal or locking away of televisions; prohibitions on video games and popular music; Greek and Latin; great books; remote places; archaic enthusiasms. It is generally wise to seek to be separate, to be in the world but not of it, to be no more engaged with modernity than were the ancient Christians with the culture of pagan antiquity; and wise also to cultivate in our hearts a generous hatred toward the secular order, and a charitable contempt. Probably the most subversive and effective strategy we might undertake would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing. Given the reluctance of modern men and women to be fruitful and multiply, it would not be difficult, surely, for the devout to accomplish — in no more than a generation or two — a demographic revolution. Such a course is quite radical, admittedly, and contrary to the spirit of the age, but that is rather the point, after all. It would mean often forgoing certain material advantages, and forfeiting a great deal of our leisure; it would often prove difficult to sustain a two-career family or to be certain of a lavish retirement. But if it is a war we want, we should not recoil from sacrifice.

Jon shared Controlling Our Food on Facebook, but as that leaves out most of my readers, I'll post it here.  I almost didn't, because whoever put it up on Google Video is some sort of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist.  That doesn't negate the importance of what this French documentary has to say, however, so in the spirit of "the wise man recognizes truth in the words of his enemies," I recommend taking the time to watch this video, because it raises some critical issues about the environment and the future of our food supply. (It's nearly two hours long, but it not content-dense, so you can do something else while listening or be liberal with the fast-forward button.)

Controlling Our Food is primarily about the Monsanto Corporation.  To bolster the claim that Monsanto will do anything to increase profits, including lie and cover up and put people at grave risk of illness and death, the first part of the documentary is old news about PCBs and dioxin and industrial/agricultural pollution.  True enough, but old, and overly long, so that even in two hours there is not enough time given to the main points. (More)

Jon provided the name; now all I have to do is figure out what "Classical Unschooling" is.  It could be confused with unschooling as it was practiced "in the good ol' days"—but for a great article on the "unschooling" label see Pat Farenga's post What's going on with unschooling?  (There's no permalink that I could find, so if you come to this post later you may have to search in his archives.)  What I mean for Classical Unschooling to be, however, is an approach to homeschooling—better yet, all of life—that combines the best of what I've gleaned from authors as divergent as John Holt and Susan Wise Bauer, a flexible plan that is low-stress yet high-expectation, creative yet disciplined, supportive yet challenging.

Liz at smithically schooled began the discussion, but it's a little hard to keep up with because if there's an an easy way to know when comments have been added there I can't find it.  (The Recent Comments feature is another reason I like LifeType on Lime Daley for this blog.)  It would be great if my highly intelligent and experienced blog readers would read and add to her discussion, which is why I'm making this post and sending you there.  I'll also post a comment here if I note that the discussion has progressed there (and hope others will do the same) so you can know more easily if there's been an update.

I briefly reviewed the wonderful Claude Moore Colonial Farm back in 2005.  It's time for an update, because there's a great article about the place and its people on Slate.  Don't miss the video, which I can't figure out how to imbed here since it's not YouTube or a similar site.

The usual disclaimers, I don't usually do "memes," etc.  But when it's books, it's hard to resist.  I found this one over at Percival Blakeney Academy.  The instructions are:

• Look at the list and bold those you have read—films don't count.
• Italicize those you intend to read.  ("Intend" may be a little strong.  How about "Would like to read someday, sometime.)
• Tag somebody if you like.  (I don’t like to tag people.  But I’d love to see other people’s lists and comments.)

I don't know who chose the books on the list, nor why.  It seems varied enough, with books old and new, and several I've never heard of.  And any book list that includes Swallows and Amazons gets big points as far as I'm concerned.  It could only have done better by including George MacDonald.  :)  My comments follow in parentheses. (More)

Why do I like our church?  Well, for one thing, during yesterday's service there was not one mention of the Super Bowl.  :)

I did afterwards, in the form of a friend who is a florist commenting that she had the day off because no one schedules a wedding during  the Super Bowl, which led Porter to comment that Super Bowl Sunday may be the only holiday truly observed and respected in America.

Although we watched only about 30 seconds of the game, that half-minute included the game-winning touchdown.  Porter feels towards the Steelers only slightly better than he does towards the Yankees, but I send congratulations to all of our Pittsburgh-area, and Pittsburgh ex-pat, friends.

With a hat-tip to Bill H., another Steeler fan, here's the Super Bowl ad you didn't see.  I believe NBC should have the right to choose the ads it shows, but I like this one, so you can see it here.  No ad revenues generated.  :)  It's safer to watch it right from here; if you go to the YouTube site itself, I recommend avoiding the viewer comments, and I don't vouch for any other videos that might be suggested.

I concluded Volume 4 by decrying modern society's "increasing belief that we are entitled to pursue our pleasures without hindrance."   The segue into Volume 5's two articles may not be as clear to you as it is to me, but here they are.

The first is Patrick Deneen's Rational Control.  While I enjoy and appreciate many of Deneen's writings, his attacks on individualism make me nervous, as I've said before.  But I think I may be beginning to understand his point of view better, as being not so much in favor of collectivism and state control as in recognizing the need to make our me-first, me-only, me-now self-indulgence subservient to the needs of the community, particularly the community of family and neighbors.  In this I can agree with him wholeheartedly.  (More)

Casting the Net is where I post various items I find interesting but about which I choose to limit my commentary—because otherwise my  backlog would be even more unendurable than it is, and you'd never see them.

Jennifer at Conversion Diary alerted me to the article she wrote for Inside Catholic, entitled Eight Responses to the Pro-Choice Mindset.   Some of her arguments simply won't fly with ardent supporters of the right to abortion, because they come down to recognizing the unborn baby as a person, which of course is the core issue.

Or is it? (More)

George Friedman's The Next 100 Years:  A Forecast for the 21st Century is not yet available, but there's a long and fascinating excerpt at InvestorsInsight.  If some of Friedman's predictions seem nonsensical, the same cannot be said about his conclusion that the least reliable predictor of the future is our expectations.  In the immortal words of investment prospectuses, "past performance is no guarantee of future return."

Friedman dramatically illustrates his point by imagining what observers standing at each even decade from 1900 to 2000 might reasonably have expected the future to be like.  In most cases they would have been proven wrong within a decade. (More)