From the Notebooks Conservatism is the response to the liberal's efforts to replace God. More particularly, conservatism is the attempt to push the immutable truths–the human condition, natural law, the rule of law, objective morality–back into the public sphere, in opposition to the myriad of liberal

Whew, packed weekend. Irregular blogging coming up, but bear with me.

(From Crystal Zevon's warts-aplenty 2007 portrait of her ex-husband, I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, comes this account of the Zevons' child-custody dispute: “Warren got on the phone; he was obviously drunk. . . . He said, 'I'm to the right

Release your inner homosexual: > A probar https://t.co/fXT1BgbTHl > — In Situ (@Insitumezcal) April 20, 2016 [https://twitter.com/Insitumezcal/status/722926911060590592] I'll be releasing this weekend with some Electric Lemonade. My basic mix: "Fill a Collins glass with ice. Pour in vodka, blue curacao

H.I.F. You ever wonder how you get away with that wretched signature of yours on credit card acknowledgements? > In his book, Prank the Monkey, humorist John Hargrave recounts a wonderfully hilarious experiment he conducted that is, importantly, quite capable of being repeated on a massive scale. Hargrave

Chesterton Short(s) It sounds like the 2016 G.K. Chesterton Conference [http://www.chesterton.org/35th-annual-chesterton-conference/] is going to be a humdinger. It's being held at Slippery Rock University, which is about 4.5 hours from me. I'm tempted to register, but

More Miscellaneous Rambling I wear a pedometer. On Saturday, I gardened almost the entire day, taking brief walking breaks. By 6:00 (start of evening Mass), I had logged in 18,000 steps. I'm hoping the constant activity, punctuated with days of outright exercise, will allow me to

Miscellaneous Rambling Wow, what glorious weather. It actually got too hot for my taste, but I'll take it. I'm focusing on greens this year more than ever. Planted over the last six weeks: six types of lettuce, three types of spinach, endive, chicory, green mustard wave,

As part of our trip to Las Vegas, we hit three parks: Fire Valley State Park, the Grand Canyon, and Death Valley. Here's us on the floor of Death Valley, temperature: 100 degrees:

Me at the Grand Canyon, kinda: