I Am Not Hamlet

His banners go forth among the clattering, roiling leaves on a blustery fall day.

From "America and Foreign Trade" by James Muir Waller from Who Owns America? published 1936. The idea that foreign trade is necessary or even desirable for our political and economic well-being should be abandoned.  We should look solely to the domestic market, the world's largest and richest, for a place to sell the products of our fields and factories.  We should move quickly toward creating a completely self-contained national economy as the best cornerstone on which to build a safe and permanent American prosperity, untouched by the political and economic turmoil of the outside world.  The best method to bring about self-sufficiency would be to devise immediately a program of protection for all manufactured articles and raw commodities that can be produced in the United States, even if the cost here is very much greater than abroad.  These higher costs may result from unfavorable natural factors such as soil, climate, and mineral resources, as well as from hig...

The classical (and Medieval) learning methodology of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric is still sound (not that I know it well enough to comment on it competently) but I'd like to offer a scaled-down version that I think can be worked in into anyone's life--child or not.  I propose that possessing a love of reading, an active imagination, and a love for and time spent outdoors will aid any student in any endeavor. It isn't enough to read, because the majority of Americans can do so.  The trouble is that skill is not exercised enough, is not cultivated, is not turned into a tawdry love affair.  So you can read--BFD!  The more important question is: Do You? Reading and reading regularly (of a variety of books, by the way) leads into and is supported by my next necessity: imagination.  This is a quality that everyone possesses, unlike literacy, but too many have one stunted by TV.  Now, TV in small quantities (how much is small?  Good question) will not stun...

All right, so you don't want to take the ecology challenge.  Maybe you'll read a poem.  This was written, I dunno, a year or two ago. Bag of Bones It was an opossum,  now it’s only a pile                                  of gore  on the hundred and eight  degree pavement of Six                                         Mile. Bloody tire track impressed  in the carcass, splintering  bones and squeezing the life  out of organs.                          We drive on past, not giving ...

Wendell Berry once wrote something to the effect that the beginning of stewardship is to know what is there.  Many of us talk a good game about caring for the Earth, but what does that mean?  Do you even know what inhabits the ecosystem of your backyard?  It is difficult, at least for me, to care for abstractions.  If you can concretely know what is around you, you might be more inclined to care for whatever is around you.  Here is my challenge: Clearly identify six to ten different species of plants and animals (and even rocks) that spend some time in your yard (your front yard counts too.)  You should include at least two plant species two insect species and two mammal or bird species.   You may not count pets plants that you planted yourself (or someone in your family) anything you can't identify So, for instance, I have a shagbark hickory, an American beech, three American elms, two mulberries, and a couple of red oaks all in various sta...

The more time I spend on the internet (which is too much if you ask my wife, and she's right) the more misanthropic I become.  If it isn't reactionary responses filled with scatological language, it's vapidity on vulgar display.  Then there are those posts, blogs, snippets, etc, that call evil good and good evil.  I've a mind to dump my CPU in the Rouge.  But then. . . how would I know what teenagers are bored because they've announced it on Facebook?

     Let a son come forth from your loins fashioned by God; first a sphere for his head; let his hair remind one of fresh-cut straw.  Let his eyebrows resemble caterpillars lightly treading his brow and a ghostly-pale path separate their twin arches.  Let his nose be straight, of moderate length, a button for perfection, with a smear of freckles across it and under his eyes.  Let his eyes, those watch-fires of his brow be cool with grey-light, or the steely calm of the barrel of a gun.  Let his countenance emulate joy: not innocence nor yet bliss but at once both.  Let his mouth be bright, small in shape--as it were, a half-circle.  Let his lips be thin like worms, yet eager to reveal a snowy, toothy smile.  Rounded like cobble let the Designer fashion his chin.  Let his neck be a small column supporting the inchoate mind inside the head expressing boyish charm.  Let his shoulders foreshadow the man to be, perfectly propor...