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Looking to navigate a spiritual harvest

One of the things that I have most enjoyed about my commute to work in Lima during the Thanksgiving season is passing small farms and viewing the fields that are being cleared after the fall corn harvest. Much of the farmland is vast and such a peaceful sight to behold on a sunny day when God has decorated the sky with fluffy, white cumulus clouds. As I have sometimes passed farmers tilling the ground or gotten stuck on the road behind a wide row crop tractor, I have thought about God’s divine system of sowing and reaping. Planting seeds in the ground that yield a plentiful harvest ...

We’d better start thinking about future jobs

The big headlines about job losses tend to focus on the big employers. Layoffs at UPS, 48,000 — at Intel, 24,000. Amazon is cutting up to 30,000 workers, and Target, 1,800. These pink slips are being dropped largely on white-collar positions. The thinking is that artificial intelligence will be able to handle much of the work now being done at desks. Dropping heavier workloads on those who remain seems to be another part of the plan. AI is considered “intelligent” automation. In other words, it has cognitive abilities. That is not quite the same thing as robotics, which is ...

How do I love perimenopause? Let me count the ways

Menopause is so hot these days. All the cool kids are doing it, a coincidence that marks the last time I will be counted as either cool or a kid. I suppose I’m not, technically, in menopause. I’m in the preemptive stages — something I have learned is called “perimenopause,” from the Greek word “peri,” meaning “around,” and “menopause,” meaning “taking a pause on all men.” It’s great to be in perimenopause at the same time as everyone else is talking about it — when podcasters and TikTokers, influencers and actresses all are angling to throw their ...

AOC poised to be Democrats’ Trump

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is both radical and unqualified to be president. But she still has a clear path to winning the Democratic presidential nomination. On Tuesday, Socialist Zohran Mamdani will likely become the next mayor of New York City. He wants a rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores and a $30-an-hour minimum wage. He once expressed his support for “seizing the means of production.” In 2020, he wrote on Twitter, “The NYPD is racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety.” He wants taxpayer-funded gender mutilation surgeries. His extreme positions ...

Broken windows policy can be found at the top

The sound you heard was windows being smashed at the East Wing. The sound you did not hear was questions from officials paid to monitor what happens to a National Heritage Site. The White House is owned by the American people, not any current inhabitant. It’s true that other presidents have made changes to the beloved building, but none before Donald Trump amputated an entire limb. The “Broken Windows” theory holds that visible disorder — graffiti, public urination and shattered windows — are signs of social decay that invite worse crimes. Starting in the 1980s, the New ...

Democrats want to keep borders open — most American’s do not

Who said this? “If you don’t have any borders, you don’t have a nation.” The speaker went on, “Trump did a better job. I don’t like Trump, but we should have a secure border. It ain’t that hard to do. Biden didn’t do it.” It was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in characteristic candor. If, as Milton Friedman argued, you can’t have open borders and a generous welfare state, Sanders, as a self-described socialist, prefers the welfare state. The facts at this point are not in much doubt. The Pew Research Institute, not an anti-immigration outfit, estimated that there ...