Although our fruit orchard is only two years old, we were surprised with a decent crop of peaches this year. By decent, I mean perhaps a few hundred peaches altogether. Unfortunately at least half of these were worm infested, and so it was my job to cut out the wormy parts before LeXuan did the peeling and processing. We spent several late evenings in the kitchen together working on the peaches, talking, laughing, joking. I took great pride in removing the wormy areas while saving a maximum amount of peach. She took great pride in screaming at the worms I missed and pointing them out to me. I soon discovered that it was to my advantage to remove the maximum amount of worm even if it meant wasting a little more peach. It was an enjoyable activity which I highly recommend to married couples. Good marital bonding: no television required! And husbands will find it considerably more civilized than frightening their wives with spiders or frogs or snakes (but just as much fun).
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Henry Dietrich of A Plumbline in the Wind comments on the new secular religion:
“In a way the health care establishment occupies the place in society the Church occupied in the Middle Ages. If you study a medieval city, you bump into a Church-related person or institution at every turn—not merely the clergy or houses of religious orders, but courts, tithe collectors, and a host of miscellanous employees. Consider the Canterbury Tales: not only is there a parson and a prioress, but a clerk of Oxenford, a summoner, and a pardoner, all of them part of the Church’s establishment. Likewise the Church provided a set of values and moral standards, which, while not always followed, were more or less universally recognized. In modern America, you can live your life without running into the Church, but you can’t avoid the health care establishment. There are doctors and nurses and hospitals; there are also the related bureaucracies, insurance companies, and firms that supply the health care system in ways great and small. As the Church collected tithes on all sorts of property, so health care takes its toll from every company’s revenue and every worker’s paycheck. And the religion of health provides the set of moral standards that are unanswerable.”
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Drew Campbell of Running River Latin School tells us why he loves small towns.
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The Yeoman Farmer, meanwhile, illustrates one of the many blessings of rural living: good neighbors.
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Thanks to my referrer stats, a couple of interesting blogs have recently come to my attention. Meigs Return chronicles the development of a new family homestead (and an old family homecoming) in the gentle hills of Meigs County, Ohio – a worthy addition to the unlikely but growing genre of “homestead blogs”. Climbing Montserrat is a fine Catholic blog from Omaha, Nebraska, with a decidedly local and traditionalist flavor. Both blogs might constitute evidence that a new Christian regionalism is emerging throughout the land …
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Mary Alexander of Against All Heresies had the great honor of watching her two sons serve the traditional Latin Mass with Bishop Salvatore Matano on the Feast of the Assumption. I have yet to see a complete text of the homily, but all reports have been extremely positive. The good bishop is reported to have said “If this is what it takes to fill our churches, then so be it!” He also told the traditionalists gathered in the co-cathedral – words that I find so astonishing it is hard to type them without tearing up a little – “This is your home. This is your home. THIS is your home!” It’s good to be home, Your Excellency! Mary is quoted in the Burlington Free Press article, and a beautiful audio slideshow can be viewed here.