Life is a Process

Life is a process. We are in that process. We are part of that process. No one stands apart from life as an unbiased, unaffected observer.

All Of Life Is An Approximation

 Life is lived and encountered approximately. It is not a precise undertaking.

New Release - Winter Hill Farm

Available now in print and e-book from  AMAZON -  BARNES & NOBLE  - and wherever books are sold

Farmers Market

 Farmers Market, Houston, Texas

An Alley in Meridian

 

                                                                An alley in Meridian

A Red Door

 A red door, in Brenham, Texas

Southland Hardware

On a recent visit to Southland Hardware
 

Countertop Reflection

Countertop Reflection

 

Box On A Parking Garage Wall

 Box on a Parking Garage Wall

Sunrise In Hermann Park

Sunrise In Hermann Park, Houston, Texas

 

Montrose - Houston, Texas

A residential street in the Montrose section of Houston, Texas.
 

SUNSET MOTEL - MIKE CONNOLLY #6

Sunset Motel - the sixth book in the Mike Connolly Mystery series - is now available everywhere online. Click the links to order.      Amazon - Barnes and Noble - Bookshop

 I like the sound of a train, passing in the distance, late at night.

 

New Edition of The Deposition

The Deposition - the 5th installment of the Mike Connolly Mystery series (originally released in 2007) will be re-released in December. It will be available in print and eBook. 

This is the latest version of the cover.

 

Other People, Other Places

AVAILABLE NOW!

Other People, Other Places - my newest collection of short fiction - is available now in print and eBook from all the usual places - AMAZON - BARNES & NOBLE - BOOKS A MILLION - and INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES everywhere.

Manhattan Book Review called it, "an outstanding book of short stories and novellas."

 

Teachers Make a Difference

One day when I was in the fourth grade, our teacher, Evelyn Miller, brought us back from lunch and spent half an hour reading to us. The story that day was about a boy who was given the chore of painting the fence around his aunt's home and how he convinced his friends to pay him to let them paint it. That story, of course, was from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain. I remember the day, the moment she read that to us - because that was the moment I began to dream of being a writer.

DOUBLE TAKE - MIKE CONNOLLY #2

Double Take is book #2 in the Mike Connolly mystery series. Part mystery. Part legal thriller. Part police procedure. It continues the story of Mike as he struggles to remain sober while defending a client accused of murder. The story is set along the Gulf Coast, primarily in and around Mobile.

Available in print and as an eBook from Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Books-A-Million - - - and wherever books are sold.

OTHER PEOPLE, OTHER PLACES - What Reviewers Are Saying

Other People, Other Places is my next collection of short fiction. It will be released in October. Reviewers love it and I think you will, too.

Manhattan Book Review called it, ". . . an outstanding book of short stories and novellas."

San Francisco Book Review said, "All lovers of fiction can find a read they would enjoy in this selection."

You can pre-order a copy of the print edition now at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and independent bookstores everywhere.

Night Rain, the fourth book in the Mike Connolly Mystery series, has been re-issued and is now available in print and as an e-Book from all the usual places.

AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, BOOKS-A-MILLION

 

Night Rain - available for pre-order

Night Rain, the fourth book in the Mike Connolly Mystery series, will be re-issued on June 15. 

The print version is available for pre-order now in all the usual places.

AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, BOOKS-A-MILLION

 

Kaboom Books

When I need a book, I start at Kaboom Books - my favorite Houston bookstore.

 

OBSERVATIONS REGARDING NON-PRIME ODD NUMBERS

 

This past year has been a challenge to all of us and with so many facing dire circumstances, the moment seemed to ask something of me other than my usual writing fare. So, instead of writing fiction I used the time to explore a topic that has long intrigued me -- the nature of prime numbers. Those odd numbers that have no factors other than 1 and themselves. No one seems to know quite how they are formed, or why, and no one has found a way of determining the identity of the next prime number without resorting to a trial-and-error method. For a system such as math, that relies on logic, not knowing these things struck me as out of character. So, I decided to have a look at the matter for myself.

My first attempts involved a direct inquiry into the nature of primes. That effort quickly proved frustrating. Primes appear with an aggravatingly complex irregularity. After wrestling with that a while I decided to try an indirect approach - determine the nature of numbers that are not prime in the hopes of exposing something about the number system that might give insight into the nature of primes. I did this by exploring on my own - discovering patterns and relationships between the non-prime composite numbers - finding those patterns first, before turning to academic sources for an explanation. The effort turned out to be not only productive, but adventurous. Transforming math from a subject endured in a lifeless classroom to a marvelous journey through an elegant and intriguing kingdom.

My latest book - Observations Regarding Non-Prime Odd Numbers - contains the result of my study so far and is available now. You can buy a copy through all the usual places: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Books A Million - and through independent bookstores everywhere.

COVER FOR ELECTRIC BEACH RE-ISSUE

Electric Beach is the third novel in the Mike Connolly mystery series and was originally released in 2006.  It will be re-issued by Dunlavy + Gray on February 1 and will be available in print and as an eBook. This is the new cover.

The Art Dealer's Wife - - Available Now!

The Art Dealer's Wife is available now at all the usual places. 

Here are the links to Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Books A Million

 

The Art Dealer's Wife

 We are running a giveaway right now on Goodreads for my next book - The Art Dealer's Wife - enter for a chance to win 1 of 10 autographed copies - click here to go to the site

THE GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED - THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ENTERED AND CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS!

Speedboat

SPEEDBOAT is a novel by Renata Adler. I came across it in my Goodreads feed. The cover caught my eye. Then I read some of the reviews and was intrigued enough to order a copy. Finished reading it recently.

The story is often described as a "plot-less" novel. Actually, it is a very cleverly designed and well-written collection of memories. Told by a fictional character about her fictional life. Arranged in short segments - some only a single paragraph. It reads like a conversation you've had with friends after dinner. One of those conversations that moves from topic to topic and back and forth and you hear something and wonder what happened next but before you can ask, the conversation moves on to another topic. Then it comes back again to the one you were interested in and you find out a little bit more, but before you can get the whole story the conversation veers in a new direction. Something like that.

The book was written in the 1970s and has the feel of the era. New York writer, movie critic, social critic. A bit of an edge to the voice. Adler was at times very much on the inside of the New York literary crowd, and very much on the outs. I like her work and was fascinated by the way she did this book.

A Moveable Feast

I recently finished reading A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway. Required reading for an art history course I'm taking this fall.

Early in his career, Hemingway lived in Paris with his wife and young child. They had a rather miserable existence but it was a heady time when other writers and artists of the era were there - Hemingway, Gertrude Stine, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, to name a few. This book provides a glimpse into what they and their era were like. The so-called "Lost Generation." A well-known moniker for the group that arose, as it turns out, from a throwaway comment made by an automobile mechanic and repeated by Stein. Hemingway did not like it. Great source for insights regarding the people and the time. I enjoyed it.

The Last Gentleman

The Last Gentleman, a novel by Walker Percy, was published in 1966. I finished reading it the other night.

This was Percy's second book and it doesn't appear to have gained the following of his first, The Moviegoer (see below). Also unlike Moviegoer, this book hasn't been critiqued as deeply for its philosophical assumptions and implications.

The Last Gentleman follows the life of Will Barrett, a young Southerner who relocates to New York in search of an authentic sense of himself and a life of purpose and meaning (common themes for Percy). Barrett, it seems, suffers from something identified only as a "nervous condition" marked by recurring fugues - episodes of disassociation from himself - and from periods of intense deja vu.

Through a series of circumstances, Barrett becomes acquainted with the Vaughts, a Southern family, apparently from Alabama, who have come to New York seeking medical treatment for their son, Jamie. The Vaughts like Barrett and in talking to him learn that they have many acquaintances in common.

When the time comes for the Vaughts to return home, they insist that Barrett return with them to help care for Jamie and serve as his companion. By then, Barrett is in love with Kitty, the Vaughts' daughter. He agrees to return with them to their home in the South where he looks after Jamie and romances Kitty.

That is the basic plot of the book, but in telling that story Percy also tells us the story of Barrett's life before he came to New York and his family's history and position in Southern society. And quite a lot about the Vaught family's story as well. Most of the book follows a continuous narrative, but not all of it and Percy slips seamlessly into discontinuous time - telling the reader things that happened earlier but without being as obvious about it as a reader today might expect from a popular novel of the current era.

This novel probably won't be my favorite Percy story. I enjoyed reading it and I thought Percy had a reason for writing it - something he wanted to tell us or something he wanted us to think about, he just never seemed to get to it. Obscurity, as someone pointed out about one of my own books, is a good thing, but too much of it makes a story unworkable. I would say something like that about this book.

Night Train to Lisbon

Everyone who writes or wants to write has suggestions about "keys" to great writing. Getting started is the most important. Never quitting is next. And then - - - reading well. I've tried to read well most of my adult life and with the pandemic quarantine I've redoubled that effort.

Last night, I finished reading Night Train to Lisbon, by Pascal Mercier. It's a philosophical novel about a language teacher, Raimund Gregorious, who is propelled by a combination of events on a quest to explore the life of Amadeu de Prado, a Portuguese physician and writer who was a member of the 1960s political resistance against the Salazar dictatorship.

The story is told through excerpts from Prado's writings, alternating between that and details about Gregorious' experiences, incidents from the life of Pardo, and from the lives of those who knew him. All of which provide the context for an exploration of ideas about purpose, meaning, the nature of memory, and the effect memory exerts on understanding.

For instance, Prado writes, "Of the thousands of experiences we have, we find language for one at most and even this one merely by chance and without the care it deserves. Buried under all the mute experiences are those unseen ones that give our life its form, its color, and its melody."

Suggesting, the things we remember are merely incidents that protrude like mountaintops from the sea of all that transpired in our lives, regarding most of which we have no conscious recollection. But the things we can't remember are still there, shaping our understanding of the present.

That's the flavor. I found it intriguing - six or seven story lines folding in on each other and the ideas that weave them together. And the quest to learn the details of someone else's story is something I readily identify with as a writer. I have several of those quests going right now, in fiction and non-fiction.

OTHER VOICES, OTHER ROOMS - TRUMAN CAPOTE

I recently finished reading Other Voices, Other Rooms - the Truman Capote novel noted pictured above. This was Truman Capote's first novel. Prior to this book, Capote had written for a number of literary magazines which made him a notable figure in those circles. This novel brought him to the attention of a national audience. The book was well received, widely acclaimed, and launched his career as one of the best-known writers of the twentieth century.

Capote was born in New Orleans but his parents were from Alabama and he spent much of his childhood with relatives in Monroeville. Other Voices, Other Rooms draws on many of his experiences there.

The book was an interesting read but a little strange at places. And the ending lost me at first, then I went back and re-read the last two chapters and figured it out. One or two of the people in the book seem not to have existed except to those living at Skully's Landing. When asked about it, Capote said he thought so, too. Which is an interesting response from the person who wrote the book. And that's what reading it was like for me, also.

THE MOVIEGOER - BY WALKER PERCY

Awakened this morning a little before five - couldn't get back to sleep - so, I went downstairs, made coffee, and finished reading The Moviegoer - a novel by Walker Percy.

The Moviegoer is usually described as a philosophical novel - sometimes as a stream of consciousness novel - I prefer the phrase “contemplative fiction.” It’s about the quest for purpose and meaning and the angst that goes with that search. Sort of a Southern fiction version of Waiting For Godot (Beckett). Compelling, quirky, and very engaging.

The book is set along the Gulf Coast and ranges from the Garden District of New Orleans to Ship Island near Biloxi. If you're from the region, ever been to the region, ever passed through the region, you'll recognize all of the places and references.

Released in 1961, it was the surprise winner of the National Book Award and established Walker Percy as one of the great Southern writers.

OBSERVATION ON PRIME NUMBERS - 3

The logarithm of every prime number is an irrational number—a sequence that neither converges nor settles into a repeating series.

OBSERVATION ON PRIME NUMBERS - 2

If 1 is included as a prime, then all prime numbers can be expressed as a sum using only the prime numbers appearing previously on the number line (using each number only once, no multiplicity). For example, 11 can be expressed as 7+3+1. This is true for every prime number, as long as 1 is included as a prime.

OBSERVATION ON PRIME NUMBERS - 1

All prime numbers greater than 7 end with the number 1, 3, 7, or 9.

LIFE IS LIGHT AND DARK

Life is light and dark. The positive and the negative. The true and the false. Both exist inside us. Both exist around us. Pursuing the dark leads only to greater darkness, but ignoring it leaves you with only half a story. And it leaves you terribly vulnerable to something worse. You have to go into the dark parts of yourself. Into that part of your life. You have to open the door and let the light inside.

THE LEGEND OF DELL BRIGGERS - A NEW BOOK FROM JOE HILLEY

My latest book - The Legend of Dell Briggers - a novella and two short stories - was released  everywhere on February 3. You can ORDER IT NOW at BOOKS A MILLION - BARNES & NOBLE, AMAZON and at Powell's Books and wherever you buy books online.

GRADING SATSUMA ORANGES

Grading satsuma oranges in Grand Bay, Alabama. November 2019

ANDY BURCHAM INTERVIEWS JOE HILLEY

An interview with Andy Burcham from 2006. Andy is now the radio Voice of the Auburn Tigers football team. The cover pictured above is from the re-released version of Double Take, published by Dunlavy + Gray. It's available everywhere in print and as an eBook.

Chinese Yuan and the Trade War

Every evening, the People's Bank of China sets the exchange rate for the Yuan against the US Dollar. Has anyone in the current US administration considered the rate set for this past Monday (8-5-19) was actually a warning of what China could do to US markets, simply by adjusting the rate to weaken the Yuan?

Devaluing a currency has a net effect on consumption similar to that of tariffs - it lowers the cost of the host country's products, while raising the price of imported goods. However, devaluing one's currency has a broader impact than merely targeting specific products with tariffs and produces collateral economic damage of a far-reaching nature, which is what we saw when the Dow Jones average dropped as much as 950 points on Monday.

Historically, Chinese officials have conveyed policy decisions through implication and innuendo. Rather like Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II noting a dramatic shift of intention by a subtle shift in language. Perhaps Monday's valuation of the Yuan was just such a message.

Time

"Time brings all things to light." 

Willie Stark

All The King's Men

The Well Placed Weed trailer

This is a great documentary about Ryan Gainey - a gardener who lived in Decatur, Georgia. I watched the film on Reel South, a show on PBS.

Children of Men: Don't Ignore The Background

You should watch this - an analysis of the movie CHILDREN OF MEN.

Quite intriguing. And unsettling.

SPRING

All winter long

the trees in our backyard

were gray, empty sticks.

But a Cardinal came each morning

and sang from sunrise to noon.

Her song spoke

of a Spring to come

with blooms and flowers and fresh green leaves.

Now, that Spring

is here.

Life

I live a solitary life.

TIME MOVES QUICKLY

Christmas comes and goes, then Spring appears and Summer, then Christmas again, faster than it used to. Already the squirrels are playing mating games in the trees behind the house.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE CONNECTING A WATER LINE

The City of Houston replaced the waterlines in our neighborhood. This is from the final work on our street.

Unedited Footage - View from the Porch - Junk Gypsy - Round Top, Texas

View from the porch at Junk Gypsy Antiques, Round Top, Texas

Unedited Footage - Lunch at Stanton's City Bites 2

Lunchtime at Stanton's City Bites in Houston, Texas

Unedited Video - Teague's Tavern at Round Top, Texas

The view from a window at Teague's Tavern, Round Top, Texas.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A TRACK HOE

One house leaving - another house coming

UNEDITED FOOTAGE ANTIQUE ROSE EMPORIUM

Unedited Footage from the Antique Rose Emporium - Brenham, Texas
May 26, 2018

FIVE GUYS

Five Guys - not sure which I enjoy most - the hamburgers or the peanuts

UNEDITED FOOTAGE WASHINGTON AND SHEPHERD

Unedited Footage - Washington and Shepherd - Houston, Texas

WHAT THE RED MOON KNOWS - AVAILABLE NOW

Set along the Gulf Coast, What The Red Moon Knows tells the story of Ruth Ecklund—seventy-something and enjoying a settled life—until the day she sees a man standing next to a yellow Cadillac. And suddenly, her world turns upside down.

She knows him—she thinks—but it can't possibly be true...can it?

Is the man beside the yellow Cadillac really Elvis—with whom she had a brief romantic encounter as a teen? Or is he Bobby Wayne Pugh, an Elvis impersonator on the run from Las Vegas hit men?

The Red Moon knows the answer but to find it Ruth must survive a madcap jaunt across Florida, an unsettling journey into the memories of her past, and a wild ride into the imagination of the stranger with the yellow Cadillac.

What The Red Moon Knows—the latest novel from Joe Hilley—available now from Dunlavy + Gray in paperback and as an eBook.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF ICE MELTING ON A WINDSHIELD

Winter in Houston, Texas

Presidential Imperative

Proverbs 16:10 says, "The lips of a king speak as an oracle, and his mouth should not betray justice." (NIV)

That verse doesn't say the king IS an oracle or that the words he utters always are true or infallible. It says he speaks AS an oracle—with the force and authority of an oracle, but it goes on to say that because of this, the king's mouth should not betray justice.

In saying that the king's mouth 'should not' betray justice, the verse presupposes that even though his speech carries authority, the king still has the capacity to say things that are wrong, untrue, or contrary to the duties and responsibilities of his office.

Rulers occupy a special place, a special office. That office gives them positional authority and power—authority and power derived solely from the office they hold. Because of that, they must control their tongue, self-edit their extemporaneous comments, and guard the language of their formal statements, lest they betray the moral imperative of their office and incur judgement because of it, rather than blessing. 

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A TRUCK OUTSIDE A CAFE

Unedited footage of a truck outside a cafe in Houston, Texas - December 2017

UNEDITED FOOTGAGE CROSSING THE ATCHAFALAYA

From the window of a car on I-10 Eastbound

BBC Imagine 2013 Vivian Maier

Incredible photos and even more incredible story

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A SMALL LAKE

Unedited footage of a small lake in November

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A CRACKER BARREL FIREPLACE

Fireplace in a Cracker Barrel store, November 2017

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A DEBRIS PILE

Debris pile in Houston, Texas

Unedited Footage of a Downtown Street

Scenes from a Houston street at night.

LUNCHTIME AT STANTON'S CITY BITES 1

Lunchtime at a Houston favorite.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A PARKING LOT AT NIGHT

A parking lot at night, in the rain.

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF A NEIGHBORHOOD

A neighborhood in Houston, Texas.

Unedited Footage of The Flood

Hurricane flooding in Houston. Briar Forest Drive looking east, toward the intersection with Gessner Road. Recorded on September 3, 2017.

FINAL CUT

Final Cut - A family moviemaking tradition comes to an end

From Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker, September 11, 2017 issue.

New Orleans’ Queen of Creole Cooking Still Reigns at 94

A great story about a great chef and a great person. Leah Chase, chef and co-owner of Dooky Chase Restaurant in New Orleans.

The Moundville Archaeological Park

Taking a break from the hurricane for a few minutes. This is a short video about a late-prehistoric site in Alabama.

Bernstein, The greatest 5 min. in music education

I often lament not paying closer attention in music theory class. This is a good five-minute substitute.

Unedited Footage of A Rose

The first post-hurricane rose bloom. Notice the sandbags still in the background.

SANDBAGS BEFORE THE STORM

Lowe's said they were sold out of sand. Which was true, but the lawn and garden section had bags of paving sand and paving base. The bags worked just fine.

A Conversation with John le Carré and Ben McIntyre

A Conversation with John le Carré and Ben McIntyre, The New York Times

Buying Gas Before The Storm

The scene outside Costco in Houston yesterday morning.

Maddow: Racism Is 'A Persistent Infection' In White American Culture | R...

UNEDITED FOOTAGE OF THE SKY

Unedited Footage From a Bookstore #1

No Nazi Scumbags Allowed In The US Military | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Is The Gig Economy Working?

The internet and all of its accouterments has transformed many things, not the least of which is the way we work. Work in all of its forms has been revolutionized, but the question remains - is this new way of working really working?

Is The Gig Economy Working? - by Nathan Heller, The New Yorker

Proverbs

From the fruit of his lips a man enjoys 

good things, 

but the unfaithful have a craving 

for violence.

Proverbs 13:2

Encouraging Good Writers

What Parents Can Do to Nurture Good Writers. An interview by Dana Goldstein. The New York Times, August 2, 2017. Read the article here. 

Several of you asked about digital versions of my earlier novels. An eBook version of Sober Justice is now available. Here's a link

We Face A Test

Refugees, immigrants, minorities, and the poor do not present a threat to us. But our response does. If we as Christians embark on a political, social, or personal path that ignores them, turns them aside, casts them back to the despair from which they have fled, then we harden our hearts to their cry and to the cry of the Holy Spirit. And when we do that, we cease to be the Church, cease to be a body of Believers, cease to be Believers at all.

For us, the issue of how to address the disadvantaged people of the world is a test. One that poses the question, do we really believe what Jesus said, and are we really committed to living in obedience to Him, or have we reduced His words and life to a collection of religious tenets to which we merely give mental assent? One offers the way to life. The other leads only to death - theirs and ours.

Capitalism and Democracy

Capitalism threatens Democracy - Democracy threatens Capitalism

Fourth of July

The Star-Spangled Banner is not a Gospel hymn.

We Need Real Leadership

We need real leadership. Not the constant-campaign we get from the GOP. That latest healthcare bill that passed the House wasn't designed to help Americans get healthy and stay healthy. It was designed to pass, so GOP members could say to the right-wing base, "We kept our promise." That's all. No intention of moving us forward. No intention of solving a problem. No purpose whatsoever except to help members remain in office.

THE BABY BOOM IN PERSPECTIVE

According to available data, birthrates in the United States have steadily declined from a rate of about twelve live births per female of childbearing age during the eighteenth century to a current rate of less than two. Plotted on a graph, the birthrate trend-line follows a slope steadily downward with only one deviation - the period associated with World War II known as the Baby Boom.

Demographers date the Baby Boom in the US at various times, but from a statistical perspective the birthrate rose above the trend-line in 1940 and increased steadily to a peak around 1955-56, then declined back to the trend-line after 1964. During that twenty-five year period, approximately 33,971,000 babies were born (US Census Bureau, Table 53, Statistical Abstract of the United States (1970), p. 47). Births during that period produced a generation of men and women who went on to lead one of the most creative periods in human history.

In 1973, abortion was legalized in the United States with the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade (410 US 113 (1973)). Following that decision, the rate of reported abortions rose from 0 in the 1970s to approximately 1.5 million procedures in 1980. Thereafter, the rate declined to approximately 1 million per year, where it has remained since. From the time abortion was legalized through 2011, a total of approximately 40 million abortions were performed (See, Trends in Abortion in the United States - 2011, Guttmacher Institute (January 2014)).

Think about that for a moment.

Abortion has eliminated a generation the size of the Baby Boom generation. And with it, the creativity, ingenuity, and advancement that generation might have produced.

SAVING CHRISTIANITY FROM THE AMERICAN DREAM

The book Radical, by David Platt has been out a while and I'm sure many of you have already read it. It has been on my e-reader for quite some time, but I only started reading it a few weeks ago. Great book about rescuing Christianity from the American Dream.

In this era's highly-charged political environment Believers often view Christianity through a political lens, rather than the other way around. Politics drives the train. Likewise, devotion to the American Dream, with its underlying philosophy of self-determination, often drives our lives, our priorities, and our theology. This book addresses that dilemma.

The will of God and the American Dream are not one and the same. Jesus calls us to a life of radical faith, not radical self-achievement.

Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream

CHINA STEPS UP INVESTMENT IN AFRICA

Four hundred years ago, more or less, Isaac Newton told us that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The notion of homeostasis applies a similar idea in a different way, suggesting that change in one area of a system dictates change in another. And so we find one of the great axioms of life. Whenever one thing wanes, another waxes. One lessens, the other increases.

As the United States withdraws from engagement with the world others, most notably China, have stepped in to fill the void. Trains, power plants, investment in agricultural production. Providing financing, technical support, and operational assistance. We back away, they step up. Our influence wanes, theirs waxes.

See below, Andrew Jacobs, "Joyous Africans Take to the Rails, With China's Help," The New York Times, February 7, 2017

He Who Oppresses the Poor

He who oppresses the poor 

shows contempt for their Maker, 

but whoever is kind to the needy 

honors God.

Proverbs 14:31

December Retail Sales

From 1992 through 2015 (the most recent year available), retail sales for December have increased in every year except one - 2008.

America In The Age of Socrates

Socrates made a fatal mistake. He thought the Greeks wanted to know the truth. What he learned, albeit too late to make a difference, was that truth no longer mattered. The Greeks only wanted to be persuaded - to be moved - to be stirred. Truth, it seems, had been redefined to mean only that of which one could persuade another. And now we enter that age ourselves.

Truth and Lies in the Age of Trump, The New York Times, December 10, 2016

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/10/opinion/truth-and-lies-in-the-age-of-trump.html?_r=0

Quiet Oblivion

I see people on the street who seem to live a life of quiet desperation - but in the pews and shopping malls I see more who seem to live a life of quiet oblivion.

Near The End

Near the end, people will revere the symbols of freedom more than freedom itself.

Twilight Of The Republic

During the recent presidential campaign, candidate Trump turned hyperbole into an art form, creating supposed facts to suit the sort of American mythological claims many think are true. Like the notion that vast numbers of immigrants come here illegally in order to commit crimes (the crime rate among immigrants is roughly equal that of the population in general), vote in our elections (voter fraud requires the collusion of hundreds of local poll workers at every level), and other claims for which neither he nor anyone else has an supporting evidence.

Now that he has won election to the highest office in the land, some had hoped that president-elect Trump would move to more reserved, judicious, comments based on substantiated facts and actual truth. After all, when a president speaks his words have consequences, both at home and abroad. But this weekend Trump returned to his old form, Tweeting on the topic of a three-state recount that the reason Hillary Clinton won the popular vote was due to "millions" who voted illegally for her. Claims for which no one has any supporting evidence.

Campaigning by hyperbole is one thing. Governing by it is quite another.

When one campaigns by hyperbole, their statements are often dismissed as political rhetoric or mere puffery - the kind of statements the stereotypical used car salesman might be expected to make when attempting to sell a car of dubious quality and value.

When one governs by hyperbole - making up supposed facts and using them to justify policies that obviate, obfuscate, and contravene the constitution - mere hyperbole becomes propaganda.

The kind of propaganda Trump attempts to sell - that elections are tainted by voter fraud (though only affecting those who voted for someone else), that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs, that globalism doesn't work, that we can withdraw from the world economically while imposing our will militarily - not only lays the basis for constitutional crisis, but turn us away from an electoral republic toward a dictatorial empire and the death of everything we claim to value about America.

If We Abandon The World

If we abandon the world - globalism, international monetary system, and the like - the world will abandon us. Our economy lives on credit, much of it extended to us by other nations, and on the constant supply of goods from abroad. Foreign countries only deal with us because it is profitable for them to do so. If we, as a consequence of our own choices, make dealing with us unprofitable, they will no longer buy our bonds and notes, or trade with us in the manufacture of the products we consume.

A Face In The Crowd

And then there's this - from Paul Papanek

The Past Is Always With US

"Hitler increasingly presented himself in messianic terms, promising to 'lead Germany to a new era of national greatness,' though he was typically vague about his actual plans."

Kakutani, Michiko, From 'Dunderhead' to Demagogue, The New York Times, September 28, 2016

Reviewing Hitler: Ascent 1889-1930 by Volker Ullrich (Knopf)