Eric Scheske

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Eric Scheske

Eric Scheske

Mint Julep: The Percy Battle?

Mint Julep: The Percy Battle?

Poet Will Percy provided this recipe for the Mint Julep in his autobiography, Lanterns on the Levee: First you needed excellent bourbon whisky; rye or Scotch would not do at all. Then you put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampened it with

Jimmy Buffet: Hymnographer

Jimmy Buffet: Hymnographer

How Jimmy Buffet can help cultivate the virtue of detachment I started listening to Jimmy Buffet songs when I was in law school. Though I was ambitiously studying hard so I could get a job with a powerful law firm, I was drawn to Buffet's music because it

How to be a Good Agrarian

How to be a Good Agrarian

I hung out with Michael Jordan outside Chicago about twenty years ago. No, not basketball Michael Jordan. I'm talking about Michael Jordan, the English professor from Hillsdale College. We met at a Touchstone conference at Mundelein Seminary. He saw my name tag and said he enjoyed my articles.

Russia’s Freaky History with the Cult of Mother Earth

Russia’s Freaky History with the Cult of Mother Earth

The Russian digs Mother Earth. This has been the case from Russia’s earliest years when dark and brutal paganism soaked her culture in blood.[1] The Russian venerates Mother Earth for her black depths, for the crops of life she provides, and for the resting home she gives at

Listening to Podcasts at Oxford in 1374 and Kansas in 1974

Listening to Podcasts at Oxford in 1374 and Kansas in 1974

Why do we love those conversational podcasts? If you were a student at a medieval university, you listened to lectures. And listened and listened and listened to lectures, often more than ten hours a day. But they weren’t like lectures at today’s universities, where hundreds of students sit

Lady, You Have One Ugly Kid

Lady, You Have One Ugly Kid

If you haven't heard, you haven't been listening: Europe is grossly under-birthed, and the United States isn't far behind. For a society to replace its population, demographers say each woman needs to average 2.1 children. The last time I looked, Germany was at

Parliament Created the 18th-Century’s Great Gin Craze

Parliament Created the 18th-Century’s Great Gin Craze

“[N]oe sort of Brandy Aqua vite or other Spirits or distilled Waters of any Kingdome Country or place whatsoever shall after the said foure and twentyeth day of August be imported into the Kingdoms of England or Ireland . . .”. If you read the Wikipedia entries about England’s Great Gin

How to be a Holy Drunk

How to be a Holy Drunk

A few notes on Sebastian Flyte The early pages of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited describe the drunken antics of students Lord Sebastian Flyte and Charles Ryder (the narrator). Ryder makes the later observation that he “got drunk often, but through an excess of high spirits, in the love

Taoing Around in the Garden

Taoing Around in the Garden

There's a great gardening book called “The Tao of Vegetable Gardening.” The author, Carol Deppe, applies Taoist principles (especially that of wu-wei, “not doing”) to the soil, but the book isn't about Taoism. It's all about gardening. The Taoism is rarely explicit, but rather