Good Saturday morning to you!  Welcome to the weekend – I have just a few items from the past week or two that I think you might consider checking out.

I’ll start off by mentioning the obvious – that Billy Graham has passed away, and there are a million stories about his life out there to check out.  The Wall Street Journal alone had like 5 of them.  Everything I’ve read thus far is pretty much all the same, and I’m just now starting to get into a few with more interesting perspectives. Once I finish them or if I have other additional thoughts about his life then I’ll pass it along (I did find it interesting and neat that he’ll be placed to “lie in honor”  in the Rotunda).  But generally, what I try to do in this space is mention items you might have missed, or that I think require extra thought.  Very often this is why I don’t post only stuff from the last week, but from several weeks back, because sometimes we have a tendency in our very short news cycles to think that something two weeks old no longer matters. Some stories require more thought, even if conclusions have been superficially reached.

The same goes with this sad situation re: the Florida shooting. We have churned through a handful of news cycles now, and some of the immediate reactions and suggestions in response to the crisis have been so short sighted that its hardly worth a long drawn out argument (I’m not going to debate teachers having guns when I have yet to speak with a teacher who actually WANTS to carry a gun in class – if they do, more power to them if they are willing to go through extensive training).  I’m still thinking through this back and forth between the Broward County blowhard and the media…I might come back to this in a week or so.

There’s an article in Politico that came my way by AEI’s daily email called ‘The Myth of What’s Driving the Opioid Crisis’ by Sally Satel.  Her main argument is that the narrative in the media and in political circles is that docs are a big part of the problem when it comes to the Opioid epidemic, and that their over-prescription of these drugs has created problems. She has good data (it seems) to back her claims up.  But what I found most interesting was her two points at the end for how she feels this crisis needs combated.  Here’s an excerpt:

Two of the most necessary steps, in my view, are making better use of anti-addiction medications and building a better addiction treatment infrastructure.

I don’t disagree with her – this is a part of combating this crisis, along with a law and order component (enforcing laws and firing incompetent law enforcement officials is part of that) that targets drug dealers and other gateway drugs.

But here’s an additional thought that, in my mind at least, runs like a hidden thread through these gun violence stories, and the opioid crisis stories, and that is the breakdown of the family structures and morality in our society.  I have been musing about whether my parent’s generation focused too much on the superficiality of these two items (speaking from a church perspective) and not enough time on the transformation affect of the essential gospel message itself, whereas my generation has refocused on the essentials of the message, but is failing to connect those essentials in any meaningful way with societal and political change. Just a thought – I could be wrong.

Thinking more along the lines of the church, and our lives in this world, there’s an excellent article by a lady named Hannah Grieser (who I know nothing about) at Desiring God this week called ‘Learn to Laugh When Life Hurts: How Humor Helped Us Fight Cancer.’  There is an absolutely HILARIOUS section ‘Hospital Punch Lines’ that I don’t think I’ll ever forget (and which you’ll have to read for yourself).

For you history buffs: A rare copy of the Declaration of Independence survived the Civil War hidden behind wallpaper. Later it was tossed in a box.  I knew nothing about this project that was commissioned by JQA.

Another interesting perspective article from over at Desiring God (they must have been hitting my inbox at just the right moment or something) called ‘At Home in Wakanda’ by Greg Morse.  I just really enjoyed his perspective – and there are several layers of perspective here.  This is one to read, and think about and discuss with friends.

And of course, Fox News, only covering the most important stories: Fight over man’s flatulence forces flight to make emergency landing, and Transgender woman able to breastfeed in possible first: report. Where would we be without Fox, I ask you?

Finally, there’s an interesting article called ‘I have forgotten how to read’ (h/t mom) that is really sad and thought provoking.  Here’s an excerpt:

Literacy has only been common (outside the elite) since the 19th century. And it’s hardly been crystallized since then. Our habits of reading could easily become antiquated. The writer Clay Shirky even suggests that we’ve lately been “emptily praising” Tolstoy and Proust. Those old, solitary experiences with literature were “just a side-effect of living in an environment of impoverished access.” In our online world, we can move on. And our brains – only temporarily hijacked by books – will now be hijacked by whatever comes next.

I sometimes think about the kind of habits I’m cultivating in myself and my kids. Are they good? Are they rewiring my brain in a bad way?  For instance, I really enjoy listening to books, and then going through and physically underlying and making notes in the margin of a “real” book along the way. Sometimes I sit and re-read my favorite parts from the audiobook. But I find it extremely hard to get through an entire book (or as many books as I’d like to) by simply reading it in the old-school way.  Am I adapting incorrectly? Am I hurting my brain in the long term?  Not sure…I guess it remains to be seen. But the thing that probably hit me the hardest about this article is the consumerism in my attitude toward reading. I often create ways of reading for myself so that I don’t have to have the discipline of just enjoying one or two books. Some of this is just knowing myself and trying to circumvent my own fallenness (one might say), but am I also just being downright lazy?  This will require more thought…

Speaking of books…

I finished ‘A Good Walk Spoiled’ this week and found it really interesting, somewhat depressing, and overall very insightful.  It confirms again to be the psychological difficulty of the game of Golf, and how important it is to have a good attitude about it despite the suffering it puts me through!  It also confirmed again just how different it is from other sports. It’s harder to make really amazing money doing it, and its a much more gentlemanly game (for all the right reasons I think) than any other currently going.

I’m about 30 books into my 200 book challenge, and several of the ones I have going right now are taking longer than they ought to. I think that is because they are longer, and more thought-provoking and its taking me longer to process them.

I’m on the verge of starting Jordan Peterson’s new book ’12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos’, which promises to be fascinating. And I have a few fictional books on tap for the year as well, which include a Ted Bell, a John Grisham, a Dostoyevsky, and a few others.  I re-read part of Stephen Meyer’s ‘Signature in the Cell’ this week, and read excerpts from ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Pilgrims Progress’.  This has been part of the problem. I’ve been revisiting some of my old favorites and its slowed down my progress on current books.  It’s a “problem” but its also a good problem to have.

Finally, I devoured some P.G. Wodehouse, and read through (well skimmed and used) ‘Books That Build Character’ in search of more books for my kiddos. Very helpful resource along with some of the other lists that Kate and I have used over the years.  In case you’re wondering, here are the books  on-deck, so to speak, for the kids (many of these we’ll read together at the lunch and/or dinner table):

That’s it for now!  I hope you have a great weekend!

PJW