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Her case was more noble than mine. She believes teaching people to cook would help overcome childhood obesity.

Having managed a media lab for over 20 years, I just wish college students could pick up their own pop cans.

Here is how she puts it:

Too many Americans simply don’t know how to cook. Our diets, consisting of highly processed foods made cheaply outside the home thanks to subsidized corn and soy, have contributed to an enormous health crisis. More than half of all adults and more than a third of all children are overweight or obese. Chronic diseases associated with weight gain, like heart disease and diabetes, are hobbling more and more Americans.

Taxing junk food or not allowing people to buy soda with food stamps has not worked, she observes. And so she asks, “what if the government put the tools of obesity prevention in the hands of children themselves, by teaching them how to cook?”

I’m not hopeful. In years of hosting students in our home, I’m not sure we have had more than a handful who could set a table without being shown how. Students often want to help prepare meals—but you have to show some of them how to slice a cucumber. And these are college students, not third graders.

So, I agree some basic education is in order. But it’s the parents who have a lot to learn. Stand in the supermarket and watch them unload their shopping carts. We could teach kids all we want, but it’s not like they would have anything to cook with that wasn’t reheated, remixed, or recolored.

I’m not sure elementary school is the place to start. Government has a way of creating programs that cost too much and produce too little. But moms and grandmoms, at home and at church, need to step up here. And dads too. My dad taught me how to cook and I am very grateful.

We often encounter college students who seem completely lacking in domestic skills, anxious to learn the simplest things about managing a home. They know they can’t eat in the college cafeteria the rest of their life.

And, with their student debt, they know they are completely unprepared for the task of being on their own. Then they move to the city and real estate agents show them apartments that don’t even have kitchens. Not that they know what to do with one.

Yes, some are clearly competent but many are not. And we have failed them in very basic ways. They know little about nutrition, less about laundry, nothing about cleaning a toilet.

So find some kid this week, or perhaps a more desperate college student, and show them how to select a melon or grate a carrot. Teach them to shop around the edges of the supermarket, buying vegetables, meat and dairy.

Or try it yourself.

Home economics, after all, begins at home.

Birthday brunch with Meg

Happy Birthday, Princess.

By this I never meant a Disney Princess, of course. Regardless of the archetype, a Disney princess almost always becomes a shallow reflection of the reality. You and I both know real life is more complicated and real dreams are more important.

Unfortunately princess has become a derogatory term, with hints of pride, haughtiness, privilege, even entitlement.

But that’s never the kind of princess you were. Or that we wanted you to be. Certainly you had your Cinderella moments. You helped me care for your brothers while your mom was taking care of Grandma.

Or perhaps I helped you. You certainly worked as hard as Cinderella ever did. And you grew to be an organized, resourceful woman, whose character is recognized and honored by many.

When your brother Christian asked you to be his Best Man (Maid), he knew if he really wanted someone to keep a bunch of guys on track and on time, you were the best man (?) for the job.

You found your Prince, too. And now you have two young princes of your own. I know few women more suited to this honor.

But calling you Princess was never about the fairy tale. It was about position, not disposition. You were a first born, an only daughter, born to responsibility and opportunity. And you managed this with deportment and grace.

I meant more than that, however. I meant also to remind you that we can be born (again) to such a life, more secure in the providence and grace of God than in any human relationship with its limitations of deceit or intrigue.

I certainly never meant that I was your king. I’m much too weak for that.

I just wanted you to know that God was. And is. And will be.

Resting in his love and his provision will always be more important than resting in mine. In His court there is love forever more.

And though only shadow of this greater glory, there is love in my heart too.

Forever more.

___________
For more in this series, see

A daughter-in-law of delights

three birthday wishes for Christian, son

So here’s to Katie, wife

be that guy, me

CC. Some rights reserved by IllogicalJake.

Apparently, about 2% of us really don’t need much sleep. That would be as opposed to the 30% who don’t get much sleep.

The Wall Street Journal describes “short sleepers” as those who literally get along fine on five or fewer hours of sleep. Researcher say for every 100 people who claim to only need five or six hours of sleep, only five actually do. (See The Sleepless Elite.)

The rest of us are merely sleep deprived.

The rare (lucky?) ones don’t nap and are generally optimistic, positive, outgoing and ambitious. They have been functioning on very little sleep since childhood. Lack of sleep doesn’t affect their moods, and they don’t need caffeine to keep going. Nor do they collapse on the weekend.

That rules out me and my three sons. And just about any teenage boy I ever met.

Short sleepers may have a very mild from of mania and there seems to be some genetic issues at play, since it often shows up in their kids. They go to bed after midnight and get up by 4 a.m., even when they can sleep in, like on vacation.

But you can’t teach yourself to be a short sleeper. The rest of us actually need seven or more hours. If you want to sleep less you will need new genes.

Certainly “all nighters” in college or other situations can create a temporary euphoria for most of us, but the evidence is pretty clear that over time such habits wear us down, reducing our immunity and our productivity. As one research told the WSJ, this temporary high is “all gas pedal and no brake,” resulting in poor decisions and eventual “recovery sleep.” Lots of it.

Not so with these short sleep energizer bunnies that just keep on going.

I spent years keeping on going. But I’ve paid the price, with diabetes and chronic colitis. One-third of Americans are sleep-deprived, regularly getting less than 7 hours a night. And experts say this puts them at higher risk of diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and other health problems.

Personally I have learned to take Psalms 127:2 more seriously:

It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

Sure, I often wish I had more hours in a day. But I’m learning to make do with what I have.

So good night.

__________________________________
What would you accomplish if you only needed 4 hours of sleep?

When you get to the village, it is deep in a ravine, down a bumpy cobblestone street. You have to park and walk across a bridge into the small town— no cars allowed. As soon as you cross the bridge you are headed up hill, with shops and restaurants along the narrow dirt streets.

We were hoping for sunshine but you could see the clouds settling into the gorge. It was much cooler than we expected so we bought Katie a windbreaker and then picked up some pastries at a small bakery and looked at some jewelry at an outdoor stall.

The roads further up into the village were lined with private homes and vacation residences, but they were beautifully set in terraced gardens. We climbed up along the rocky, wooded slope for a while until we found a restaurant and had supper.

There were lots of German meats on the menu but we chose trout and chicken again. I did have some amazing sauerkraut on the side. (Can you say sauerkraut in Spanish? Me neither. ) We also picked up some homemade German frankfurters to bring back to the house.

The clouds had settled in and the mist was quite heavy when we got to the restaurant but by the time we finished eating it was raining. And by the time we got to the bottom of the gorge again it was raining quite hard.

We were soaked and as we started out up the cobblestone road we saw a man and a woman with a little girl hitchhiking in the rain. We picked them up, thinking they had probably parked at the top of the hill and just needed to get back to their car.

It turned out they were the artisans that made the jewelry and lived about 20 miles away so we took them home. It was on the way. We practiced our broken Spanish and they practiced their broken English, although without a doubt our Spanish was a lot more broken. It’s great to have our little Spanish-English dictionary.

The little girl was exhausted and fell immediately to sleep. Her dad talked about his travels and asked questions about ours. They had planned to take the bus but were caught, like we were, in the rain. The woman was his mother.

We were all cold but it was a warm moment between new friends. We hugged and kissed each other on the cheek when we dropped them off.

It’s Argentina after all.

I’ve referred to the parrots here, as a trope for the slightly exotic character of our surroundings. But I wouldn’t want to leave the wrong impression.

I get a sense that the parrots are a nuisance bird. I got that impression when Ivan bought me a sling-shot the second day we were here and wanted me to bring it to Santa Rosa.

There are dozens of them in the nearby trees, with large thorn-infested nests high in the trees. The thorns drop on the ground, catching on your feet or spouting troublesome bushes in your yard.

And the chatter is incessant. Sometimes it’s like trying to rest with a cement mixer outside your window, although the cement mixer is more melodic.

And dogs? Now that’s another story. They are everywhere. There are three of them sleeping on the porch right now and we have no idea who they belong to.

The dogs are gentle enough. I’ve not had a dog so much as growl at me the whole time we’ve been here, even though they roam the streets in packs and every walled and gated middle-class home has one or two in the yard to bark at you when you walk by.

Someone should write a book about Argentines and their dogs, although I doubt if anyone ever thought of it. They are as ubiquitous as the air. It’s the end of compost as we know it.

It’s the end of trash pick up as we know it too. Every home has a bin for garbage, mounted on a pole. And we still pick up the scattered trash almost every day. Who would have thought that a dog could climb a poll? Or maybe it’s the parrots, after all.

But when I grow up to be president of Argentina, there’s going to be a leash law. Either that, or everybody gets a sling shot.

We are settling into our own routines, here on the edge of the mountains. I’m on sabbatical, which implies rest but in modern academia involves a set of expectations about the scholarly life.

I’m reading in the morning, thinking more about the life of the mind in general than the specificity of scholarship in particular. Currently that means I’m reading about pedagogy, theology and generosity: Kronman’s Education’s End, Piper’s A Sweet and Bitter Providence, and Bennett’s The True Saint Nicholas.

Katie just finished Klassen’s The Apothecary’s Daughter and River’s The Atonement Child. She’s well into Shelley’s Frankenstein. We interrupt each other and read aloud with the gracious insolence of life-long lovers. (I’m clearly going to have to reread Shelley.)

In the afternoon, during siesta, we sit at a coffee shop downtown while all the shops are closed. I have café con leche and she has té con leche, while I write and she emails or Skypes her business associates and clients.

Before returning to the house for a light supper, we take a walk along the river that runs through town, as a mountain breeze wafts down the valley and couples sit along the bank sipping maté.

Yes, it’s an idyllic life, albeit a brief one. And strangely invigorating—my head spins with the possibilities. I want to write things, and start things and do things, more than time or opportunity allows.

But the streams of consciousness are the fountains of significance. I’m grateful for this chance to walk beside a river of ideas.

Here is an excerpt from “who is Jesus and why does it matter?”

the king thing? We have no idea at all, even though Christ as sovereign Lord is where an understanding of who Jesus is must lead us in the end. This isn’t about Queen Elizabeth and Prince Henry, bound by Parliament and centuries of human reason and regulation. We’re talking Darius, with power of life and death, as less than a choir boy. Ultimately Jesus is the King (Revelation 17:14, 19:16) before whom the heavens and the earth will melt.

This is our granddaughter. She is cute. She calls me Santa.

Ours was often a transitional life.

By the time I was 16 I had lived in 13 different places, and mom was blessed that God often and finally provided some still waters. Our home on the mountain was one of those places. So was the farm at Ft. Ogden. And finally she was blessed in her later life to sit and watch the mostly tranquil waters of Lemon Bay. As Katie and I have been sitting in her backyard for the last few evenings, we’ve thought about the times mom and dad must have sat there together, resting and contemplating the grace of God.

The Lord provides these times and places, although we have to learn how to recognize them and appreciate them. At home Katie and I are learning to sit on the porch and sip a cup of tea. Each of us is led to still waters, although we often fail to drink. Attending to these times is a discipline of the heart. It is here where he restores our soul. It is here we find the strength to follow the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.

The good shepherd knows where the deep pools are. He leads us there, he meets us there and he fills us there. Jesus tells us those who hunger and thirst after righteousness will be filled, and that he himself is the everlasting water, and that he alone can quench our thirst.

Augustine put it this way: “Oh God! Thou hast made us for thyself and our souls are restless, searching, till they find their rest in thee.” When we are led beside the still waters we can drink deeply and rest. We cultivate those habits of life that bring us time and time again to the still waters, and all those habits reflect our willingness to be led by him.

He leads us beside the still waters.

Born on November 7, 1933 in Naples, Florida, she was the daughter of Jack and Mary Prince. Although she came from a family of some means, her own mom was killed in an auto accident when she was four and her Dad never quite understood or accepted what we would call today a learning disability.

She found a friend in Jesus, however, and also introduced him to a young drifter named Wally Metts. They ran off and got married in Georgia when she was 17 and began a remarkable life together, marked by 50 years planting and pastoring churches in Florida and Tennessee.

A noted pastor, author, Christian educator and radio personality, he preceded her in death by six years. She was also preceded in death by a menagerie including dogs, cats, donkeys, goats, ducks and goldfish, all of which she maintained her husband was now caring for in heaven.

Noted for her gift of mercy, her love of animals, and her adventurous spirit, she will be missed by her three children and their spouses (Wally and Katie, Toy and Kent, Joy and Garry), twelve grandchildren (Margaret and John, Christian and Ann, Ryan, Mitchell, Michael, Elyse, Corey, Pilgrim, Krista, Myra), two great-grandchildren (Tabitha and Timothy), a step-mother (Grace), two sisters (Mary and Betty), a brother (John), former parishioners (hundreds), caregivers (dozens) and her cats (two).

Loved as a Sunday School teacher and pastor’s wife, she was a member of the Calvary Baptist Church in Englewood, Florida. Once a year she gathered with the Old Timers Club of Naples to celebrate the heritage of “Old Florida.”

She struggled for over a decade with complications from a stroke, diabetes, renal failure and four episodes of cancer, but remained unto the end a rare, independent spirit who loved the open road and never lived in a house with air-conditioning.