Yesterday I was supposed to spend the afternoon painting. We have many square feet of wood in need of paint. This was my mission.

Instead, we drove into the biggest honky tonk near our wilderness spread, which happens to be the little Kansas town of Newton. Little Newton has two worthy bookstores, and a health food store, and at least two nifty diner-type eateries. Also a local donut shop. Doughnutery. Whatever.

Isaac and I wandered off on our own and into the health food store, where we found a tray of free chips and spicy spinach-asparagus dip. We agreed that lunch hadn't really tided us over in the manner to which we were accustomed, and so we stood there grazing until people began to give us disapproving looks. Double-dip one time and everybody gets completely pharisaical. It's not like this is cold and flu season, people.

We all spent about an hour in the bookstore. The way this works is Caleb immerses himself in books, while Eli and Isaac make a faithful effort for approximately ten minutes, in the older boy's case, and ten seconds, in the younger boy's case. Isaiah alternately squawks to be picked up or put down, whichever is most inconvenient for you. The way to handle Isaiah is to give him Cheerios. We are teaching this boy to squawk for Cheerios. When he is grown he will sit on a milk crate in Times Square, holding a big sign that says: "Will squawk for Cheerios." You don't often find street people who can spell "squawk," but we are aiming to home-school the child, after all.

So the point is, I bought a nicer paperback edition of Canterbury Tales to replace my worn-out version at home. Please don't take that to mean I am a Chaucer scholar. I only read it one good time in high school, and that was because they made me, and because I discovered it has lots of dirty parts.

Anyway, I like to see the names of people who owned books before me. My old copy of Canterbury Tales was once owned by Martha Ann Elliott. I don't know anything about Martha Ann Elliott, except that she wrote her name on the title page of my book in curvy cursive letters, as well as at the top of page 241. Perhaps she did that to snare the clever thief who might purloin her book and rip out the title page. The constable would have him by the collar, demanding that he return the book to Martha Ann Elliott, only this devious thief would sneer: "Look, her name isn't in it. Possession is nine points of the law." Criminals always know the law better than the rest of us. Case in point: lawyers.

But because she had been so foresighted, intrepid young Martha Ann Elliott would confidently step forward, coolly flip to page 241, and in so doing send the wretch to reform school. Afterwards, Martha Ann Elliott would skip with her best friend to the soda shop, where they would share a chocolate malted.

I don't know where Martha Ann Elliott grew up, but I like to think it was a place with constables and reform schools and chocolate malteds. I like to think that Martha Ann Elliott led a life with many adventures, and that years later, as she lay in her comfortable dying bed surrounded by her rambunctious yet respectful grandchildren, she wondered about this copy of Canterbury Tales, and sent a good thought to the person who owns it.

As for my new copy, it was once owned by Mary Esther Hill, who wrote her name on the title page as well, in sassy, forward-slanted cursive. I don't have a story made up for Mary Esther Hill yet, except that she greatly admired Flannery O'Connor and raised peacocks on her family's milo farm. But I think she had a fine life as well. I'm happy to report that neither she nor Martha Ann Elliott underlined the naughty parts of Canterbury Tales. I appreciate that because sooner or later my sons will start perusing these books, and I want them to have to hunt for the naughty parts, just like I had to do. Start coddling your kids and they'll end up on a street corner begging for Cheerios.

But the real point is this: I've gone from Martha to Mary. I like to think that means something, if perhaps only that I should aspire to do so. Which is why I'm writing to you instead of painting. Now I'm going to go inspect each boy's Lego spaceship, which they have been laboring on in the basement for the past half hour. And then maybe I'll paint. Or maybe I'll see if there's anything to Chaucer beyond the naughty parts.

I hit a snake in the head with a rock the other day. It was a fat water snake, the kind that all the experts say isn't poisonous, and is more afraid of you than you are of him, and a lot of other baloney that you shouldn't believe coming from somebody who likely as not managed all the A/V equipment in high school and was captain of the Dungeons and Dragons Club before getting his snakeology degree. (Speaking of D&D, check out my friend John Miller's essay in the WSJ.) All I know is that this snake had a triangular head like a viper, and showed no intention of moving as I approached. I think he wanted me to step on him.

(Brief and graphic aside: Did you know I was almost bitten by a water moccasin as a child? He was five feet if he was an inch, and he looked to be ten feet to a kid. He was as big around as my bony leg, and he came out of a bunch of reeds at me. My testicles didn't drop back down again for a month. Only guys will understand this.)

So there I am on my property with that slithery snake who thinks it's his property. I pick up a few rocks, and sizzle one just past his head. No movement. He's one cool customer, this snake. So I try a different approach, with a rock the size of my fist. I launch it like a basketball. It lands on his head with the sound a walnut might make if you whack it on your tabletop.

This gets his attention. It also gets my dog's attention. She comes running over to investigate, and at this point I'm wishing I had one of those aggressive hunting type dogs, instead of an old once-abused lab-retriever. She thinks she can be friends with anyone. But this snake, nursing a headache now, isn't feeling friendly. So he lunges at her, and she jumps out of the way, and then he starts slithering into the reeds by our pond. I launch another rock at him, and hit him in the tail, which makes him jump like a certain Woodlief baby who recently learned to keep his wet fingers away from electrical outlets.

And then the snake was gone. I like to think he is lying dead in the reeds, but I suspect I'll be seeing him again. And since he's shown he doesn't like to cede his ground, next time it's for all the marbles. Mano a snako, if you will, just like John Wayne would have done it. And don't think the Duke wouldn't have used a gun, even if all the so-called experts say water snakes in these parts aren't poisonous.

We bought a bunch of algae-eating fish yesterday for the very same pond where Mr. Snake is in residence. Two animated grass carp and a bunch of wiggly fathead minnows. The boys stood with me on the dock while I opened the thick plastic bags in which the irritated fish had been placed, and then emptied them into the water. It probably would have been wiser to squat at the edge and ease them in, so differences in water temperature didn't cause some kind of fish shock. But see the above section about the water snake. I dropped in the fish like they were Airborne Rangers, and if they can't hack it, I'll go buy some tougher ones. Does anyone know of a fish that eats snakes?

Maybe I should take an approach like the U.S. military hunting Talibaners in Afghanistan, and just start firing buckshot all along the shore. If nothing else it would relieve some stress. But if snakes are anything like Islamofascists, I'll only attract snakes from all the neighboring ponds, and find myself in a protracted holy snake war on hostile terrain. Probably better to win the hearts and minds, with limited psych-ops. I wonder what music most repels water snakes? The Alan Parson Project? Mr. Mister? The Carpenters?

Or perhaps I could adopt the tactic used by the little boy in There's an Alligator under My Bed. I would have figured that my most tender-hearted and imaginative child, six year-old Eli, would not want a book about a large carnivorous creature under a little boy's bed. Instead it is the only book he wants to check out from the library. I suppose we are going to have to break down and buy it. Or perhaps he might enjoy Mercer Mayer's lively reading. Check it out and tell me if you think it will work with snakes:

Friday afternoon it was just me and Isaiah, biggest grump and littlest grump. I was painting when he woke from his nap, and so I fetched him from his crib and we tried to figure out what to do with each other until the Mama and brothers came home. I put on my Best of Steely Dan CD. There's something both troubling and endearing about seeing one's year-old baby wiggle in delight to:

"The Cuer--vo Gold, the fine Co--lum--bian..."

But we went with it. For all Isaiah knew, they were singing:

"Some Ma--ma milk, some squished up ba--na--na..."

You didn't know this, but Isaiah has had trouble swallowing. He would gag even on baby food, and he wasn't gaining weight. The doctor had his throat X-rayed, which revealed nothing abnormal. We were relieved by this, though perturbed by the extra year's savings I'll have to put away to pay for the therapy he's going to need after the psychological trauma of the X-ray, which involved me handing him over to strangers who shoved him beneath a big scary machine. If he refuses to get in cars when he's older, and insists on sleeping outdoors, and has trust issues, we'll know why, won't we?

The point is, we've been excited by little milestones, like his not choking on mashed sweet potato. So there we sat on the kitchen floor, Isaiah and me. He had a lean and hungry look, young Isaiah, and I was feeling a rumbly in my own tumbly. So I fetched the Cheerios.

I sat down in front of him and opened the box. He did a happy, anticipatory wiggle. "I think you're ready," I told him. He wiggled. I gave him a Cheerio. He gummed and chewed at it, let it float around in his mouth for a minute, and then swallowed with a smile. I clapped, and he wiggled, and then he squawked for another.

So we sat on the kitchen floor and ate Cheerios, and it was a good afternoon.

In an emotion-laden account, NPR's Terry Gross exposed the brutality of partial-birth abortion today. She interviewed photojournalist Brent Stirton, who "took a photograph that shocked the world," as NPR explains, the victims "murdered, execution-style...simply slaughtered."

Just kidding. They're up in arms about some gorillas that got killed in the Congo. Not to belittle the atrocity. I mean, they're sentient beings, and in many ways they resemble humans. The gorillas, I mean. Not those fetus thingys. (HT: Wife)

Perhaps it was serendipity that led me to read Caleb Stegall's essay on food and politics while biting into a tasteless apple. And is it the case that salmonella actually carries the flavor in tomatoes, because ever since that scare, every tomato I've had the misfortune to bite into has the flavor of stale air. Just a thought. Here's a money quote from Stegall's piece:

"To bridge this chasm requires a firm recognition that self-provisioning is dirty work done by sun hardened men who obtain not the rarefied sophistication of the credentialed witch-doctors and their organic brews but membership in the rarefied league of freemen who can pretty much tell anyone and everyone, as circumstances may require, to go to hell without concern for the consequences (taxman excepted).

That's the feed store definition of freedom in Jefferson (yes, that Jefferson) County. Kansas. though it's not taught much in social studies textbooks."

My last two essays at World on the Web have concerned wisdom offered by Dorothy Sayers and Henri Nouwen. In each instance commenters raised the rumor that the writers were gay. It's disappointing that we continue, in the Christian community, to have this outsized, paranoid obsession with homosexuality. It's also fascinating that so many Christians will take a statement like the foregoing sentence and spin it into the belief that I am somehow departing from Christian dogma on homosexuality. I was surprised to learn that some readers, having read months ago my (unoriginal) claim that many Christians respond to homosexuals in an unchristian manner, thereby concluded that I am heretical on the topic. Find me the passage, you fussy Pharisees, where Jesus instructs you to hate homosexuals.

Warning: this will necessitate your setting down those stones and picking up your Bibles.

And speaking of disappointment, if Christian Republicans won't trouble themselves to read an economics book before opining on immigration, they might bloody well consider the Bible. If I hear one more of them trot out the obfuscation about legality, I'm going to scream. Find me one Christian using this excuse to support mass deportation of illegals — just one — who honestly supports legally opening our borders to considerably greater inflows of immigrants, and I'll eat my shoe. They claim they are up in arms because these people are coming across the border illegally, but the truth is that not a one of them supports any significant increase in legalized immigration. So this "they're breaking the law, which a Christian can't support" talking point is just a self-righteous cover-up of the unflattering truth, which is that they don't want those different-talking brown people here at all.

And aside from the neo-Nazis, World Net Daily is maybe the most shameful of the bunch, with its thoughtless fusion of pseudo-Christianity and pseudo-conservatism, replete with snake-oil banner ads, "Invasion America" headlines, and panegyrics to Tom Tancredo.

(New readers firing up their commenting pen might first consider my loving salvo at American Family Radio on this topic, along with a Thanksgiving-oriented response to many readers who disagreed.)

I kept all the boys last night while Wife had a much-needed break. She had a pedicure, and a meal without interruption. The boys and I did alright. Isaiah ate his sweet potato mush without fuss, and then crawled from Daddy to brother to brother, begging tiny spoonfuls of chocolate pudding.

I explained to the boys that old-school Brits call desserts "puddings," which they thought was odd but endearing. Then I told them that french fries are "chips." That seemed just downright odd to them, especially since "fries" doesn't mean potato chips. Caleb asked me where the french fry was invented. "Germany," I told him. He'll realize that's funny in a couple more years. In the interim, however, he's likely to misinform all his friends.

My head is in a frenzy of idea-connecting and imagination, which I can't explain very well, but which comes over me from time to time, usually as the harbinger of a fruitful writing period. Which is nice. The downside is that I lose my place in conversations, and have difficulty stringing together tight, reasoned sentences on the page until the storm has passed, or until I am in its eye, or whatever storm-type phraseology applies here, since I find myself in the midst of a storm metaphor and haven't the strength or inclination to type my way out of it.

So what will follow (above, because you know how these fancy blogs spin themselves out in time in an upward direction) are a few of these random, streaming thoughts, with the distasteful and secret and specially-saved-for-some-other-writing-project ones removed.

Why spit them out as separate posts? Because I think some people get demoralized when they come here and find one of my typical, three pages long essays. Plus breaking them up will signify the fragmented state of my thinking. And also because I feel like it.

I realized, after posting about his birthday, that I haven't said much about Isaiah. This has been largely the result of his being unable to do anything but poop and squawk. But I gave it some thought, and came up with two lists of particulars for those of you who want more information about the littlest Woodlief.

Things one year-old Isaiah has decided he likes:

• Ice-cream cake


• Daddy's spaghetti, when finely chopped


• Being carried by one of his older brothers


• Pulling out all the cookbooks and scattering the loose-leaf recipes neatly folded therein across the kitchen floor


• Getting tossed in the air by Daddy


• Everything about Mama, but especially her breasts


• Giving open-mouthed kisses


• Yanking Daddy's goatee


• Yanking the cat's tail


• Baths


• Having Isaac climb into his crib, even though Isaac's parents have repeatedly threatened him with bodily injury if he does it again

Things Isaiah is decidedly against:

• Getting licked all over his baby-food smelling head by the dog


• Naps


• Being strapped into his car seat


• Not being able to ride on the tractor with Daddy


• Anything involving the green bean

One year ago, Isaiah John Woodlief came into the world, which is better for it. Today he will have presents, and Daddy's homemade spaghetti, and an ice cream cake, with which is brothers are eager to help him. Happy Birthday, little squawker.

Modern politicians talk a lot about working. We must "work together" to build a future for our children. Elect me and I'll "work tirelessly" to give you this or that good thing. Here is the lawyer Obama, newly minted expert on energy economics, arguing that we need to work with a range of favored scientific companies to develop viable alternatives to oil. And likely as not, there is your city or county official, talking about working with businesses to develop your local economy.

The thing about politicians, of course, is that most of them don't know much at all about work. Sure, they spend a lot of energy talking, and meeting people, and raising money, so that they are tired and feel as if they have been working, but most of us understand that none of that makes an engine run, or pulls food out of the ground, or generates a medicine that heals, or a suit that fits, or a book worth reading. If Obama knew the first thing about how to develop viable alternatives to oil, he would be far wealthier than he is now, just as your local politicians would be millionaires if they knew anything about venture capital.

This reality won't stop any of them from confidently investing your money in "economic development" as if they have some window into the future of American prosperity, of course, but let's not kid ourselves about what's really going on. While people who work for a living tend to understand that the future is messy and unpredictable (which is why most of us choose to work for large, stable companies rather than risk venturing out on our own), to politicians the future is a term paper problem. Economy in a funk? No problem, says Obama. I covered that at Columbia.

Your local politicos have a similar conceit, which can be summed up in the political canard that is some variant of the tiresome campaign slogan: New Solutions — as if there are such things, and as if Congressman Blowhard, who is only successful by dint of talking far more than he listens, has somehow divined what they are.

So all this talk of politicians rolling up their sleeves to work for the rest of us evokes the image of a drunken uncle insisting that he be allowed a turn at the wheel on the family vacation. You have to let him stay in the station wagon because he is your uncle, but he ought to sit in the very back, away from the children, where he can stare out the rear window and offer bold pronouncements about where you have been, and pretend that he had some part in getting you there.

The real problem, I suppose, is that too many of us have gotten into the habit of thinking that the jabbering drunk ought to be the one at the wheel, that there really is a road to a painless future up ahead somewhere, and only he can find it. Which is why I think we ought not let anyone vote until he has mastered three books: Bastiat's The Law, Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, and Seuss's I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew. Which is one reason why, further, I will never be a viable candidate for public office.

Q: What is the chief end of man?
A: To be a good boy.

Part of my extension of Dorothy Sayers's tongue-in-cheek exploration of the average man's theological knowledge, over at World on the Web.

Occasionally I'll see a woman driving with her rear-view mirror turned cockeyed, so she can do her make-up, or generally just keep an eye on the Wonder of Herself. But today I saw a guy (I'll not apply the word man to this creature) driving with his mirror twisted leftward. He was working on his eyebrows with one of those personal trimmers.

I am not making this up.

I almost dragged him out of his car at the stoplight and beat him to death with my Johnny Cash CD case. Then I remembered that on my better days I aspire to be something approximating a Christian. Only later did I recall that there is something, I am almost certain, in Leviticus that would have condoned my impulse.

But the point is, this is what we have come to: a grown man, grooming his eyebrows in traffic, using his rear-view mirror. In Wichita. Lord, have mercy.

"Dad," Eli asks me in a whisper, "why did Abraham kill Isaac?" We are in his bed, looking out at the darkening sky and listening to crickets. In his bed across the room, our Isaac is already asleep, a lamb clutched to his chest, his mouth agape.

"He didn't kill Isaac, remember?" I kiss Eli on the head. "God sent a ram to be sacrificed in his place."

"I thought Abraham killed him."

"Nope."

"But why did God tell him to kill Isaac?"

It's more complicated to explain than some might think. As I explain how God wanted to stretch Abraham's faith, and how Abraham thought God would bring Isaac back to life, and how God was even then writing the story of Jesus, I feel myself coming to that place where I am struggling: the doctrine of propitiation, of score settling, of wrath. In my mind I can hear the fussy answers from self-satisfied types who take a masochistic delight in the Angry God. I hear a string of preachers from my own childhood, warning me to be a good boy or go to hell. I remember the nightmares I still have, of demons coming to take me there.

"Why did Jesus have to die?" Eli asks.

A good Presbyterian would tell him the wages of sin is death, and that a price had to be paid, a sentence served. Instead I tell him that when sin came into the world, it made all of us sick. "Do you know how when you do something bad, it makes you feel bad inside?" Eli nods. "The blood of Jesus will make all of us well," I tell him. "It works slower on some than others, but it's the medicine we need. And one day he will come back, with all his angels, and then all the evil things in the world will try to fight them, but they will lose, and then none of God's children will be sick any more."

Eli lays his head down on my arm. He asks me why we can't see God, and why God made the Devil, and when Jesus will come. I tell him about heaven, and how all things will be made right one day, and that Jesus will never let him go. I put my head next to his, and breathe in his scent of wet puppies and toothpaste. "I will always love you," I tell him, "no matter what."

"I know."

Somewhere beyond the crickets and our line of hedge trees is the world into which one day he will venture. Maybe he will have a more accurate understanding of whether the blood is a cure, or a debt paid, or both. Years ago the answers seemed more certain to me.

I think sometimes my children will leave me with more questions than answers. But they will go knowing that they are loved by their God, and by their father. If you ask me what is my creed, this is what I will tell you: that I am selfish through and through, but for them to know those two things I will lay down my life, walking all the chastened paths along which a parent must stumble.

Wife and I saw M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening last night, which when you factor in the price of gas and babysitting and popcorn, makes us more investors in Shyamalan's flick than viewers. Without giving anything away, I can tell you the movie continues Shyamalan's trend of coming up with fascinating ideas, drawing us in with haunting early scenes, and then dissipating our goodwill with clunky dialogue, moments that earnestly strive for importance only to yield inadvertent comedy, and, in an unfortunate twist for Shyamalan, violence that is frequently grotesque without being convincing. This movie is, in short, very much like pro wrestling.

He's made some stinkers before, but he also made The Sixth Sense, to which I'm sure he's tired of having his other films compared, but which remains the primary reason many of us keep coming, in hope, to his offerings. If you're wondering where this movie fits on the Shyamalan Scale of one to five, where The Sixth Sense is a seven and Lady in the Water is the cube root of pi, The Happening is a solid three. Not as good as Signs or even The Village, but better than Unbreakable, which itself was mostly forgiveable, except for Samuel L. Jackson's unfortunate hairdo.

Despite my disappointment, I keep rooting for Shyamalan. While the major motion picture studios seem at a loss to produce anything but big-budget interpretations of comic books, remakes of movies that were second-rate the first time around, gross-out vehicles posing as comedy, and the occasional quasi-indie film whose merit stands in inverse proportion to their influence over its production, Shyamalan is a visionary. He just can't seem to execute — on dialogue, plot, or direction (how does anyone make Zooey Deschanel irrelevant in nearly every scene but her last???), which means that ultimately his vision disappears.

I hope he continues making films, though. I'll keep coming to see them, plunking down my money and hoping that his vision, once again, is supported by his craftwork, rather than undone by it.

And now, my one-line take on the film, for those of you who want a good quip to explain it to your friends. This probably qualifies as a spoiler, however, so consider this your SPOILER ALERT, and avert your eyes if you want absolutely no hints about the movie's content.

The Happening is Maximum Overdrive with hydrangeas. You heard it here first.

Last night I read Dorothy Sayers's essay, "Why Work?", and came across this thought, which puts me in mind of the recent federal Economic Stimulus Payment (which, if anyone from the IRS is reading, I still have yet to receive):

A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.

Or you could consider Dave Barry's assessment of the situation. (HT: Lori M.)

I've had to travel four of the last five weeks, so that by Friday I was feeling thin, as Bilbo Baggins claimed, like butter stretched over too much toast. Traveling like that leaves me muddle-headed, and not in the good way. Some of you know what I mean about a good muddle-headedness — you get it when your thoughts are focused on a project, or a dream you have had, or a beautiful scene in the novel you are writing. People speak but you only partly hear them, bugs bite but you don't notice, you forget what speed you are traveling on the highway. I didn't say that good muddle-headedness wasn't dangerous, did I? But so are most things worth experiencing.

Then there is the bad muddle-headedness, which is what I get sometimes when I travel. It's the feeling of being shot out of a cannon, so that every field you darken and every cloud you scatter on your journey is a physical reminder that you are out of place, that it is only your thin skin that holds everything inside you. It's lying exhausted on a hotel bed unable to sleep, and the nightmares that come when you do sleep, and the feeling, when that alien sun penetrates your eyelids, that your soul has gone slantways, and won't ever be right again.

Or maybe it's just me.

I always feel like the prodigal son when I come home, welcomed though I don't deserve it, and amazed that I could ever have felt disconnected from the earth when I have this woman and these little ones waiting for me there. It reminds me that I am just water and faint breath and the thinnest spirit, even though to them I am Husband, and Daddy.

And so yesterday we celebrated Father's Day. They gave me (in no particular order, though you can probably guess which I liked the most):

Augustine's Confessions (Everyman's Library edition, of course)
a Library of America edition of James Agee's film criticism
Sufjan Stevens's Christmas CD collection
the Twister DVD
a cowboy hat
chocolate pudding

To top it off, a good friend loaned me his 20 hp Kubota tractor, replete with belly deck, tiller, and grader, until I get my feet wet (metaphorically speaking — if I actually get them wet it means I took the tractor on too step an angle near the creek, in which case stop reading this and come get me out). This involved borrowing another friend's trailer, which was located at a third friend's spread, and then maneuvering the whole 4,000 pound rig on back country roads, on account of our not exactly being street legal, what with the lack of lights and chains on the hitch and so on.

And this is how you know God has a sense of humor. We moved all this heavy equipment without so much as a scratch to my truck, and then, as an afterthought, my friend suggested I take an old dead Christmas tree for my pond (it gives shelter to the smaller fish). I strapped it in, but botched the job. Halfway home it flipped over the back before the straps locked it tight, so that its trunk pressed a three-foot dent into my tailgate, mangling the latch.

The thing is, though, I'll take a busted tailgate over leaving home any day of the week, and twice, as it turns out, on Sundays. I used to feel guilty over never having slouched around Paris, or speared fish in Fiji. I suppose those things will be nice should they come my way. But for now, there's plenty of adventure right here on the home spread. And from the way I feel when these babies and this woman crowd onto our big bed and burrow themselves into my chest, as if I am the Christmas tree and they the little fish, I can't imagine any place more suited to who I am, or more importantly, who I am supposed to be.

Some of you might enjoy my father's day essay (of sorts) over at World on the Web.

This is how the dinner table works in our house. The food is ready, and Wife is announcing this in her best I-cooked-for-you-people-while-you-all-conspired-to-drive-me-crazy voice. Baby Isaiah is squawking because he came equipped with a special squawk alarm that goes off the moment anyone puts him down. His older brothers are doing a Three Stooges routine around the door, Isaac stopping because he realizes his socks are wet from playing in the creek, Eli bumping into Isaac as he bends to remove the wet socks, sending him sprawling, and Caleb bumping into the door because Eli, in an effort to be our one obedient son, has closed it behind him lest the cat/dog/mosquitoes/stifling heat/snakes get in. Their father, meanwhile, is asking how many fingers of whisky he can pour without setting a bad example for the children.

This is followed by tromping up and down the stairs, as each boy either washes his hands but forgets to pee, or vice versa. Wife is warning them the food will get cold, and ignoring my question about the whisky. I am holding baby in one hand, and a whisky bottle in the other. Isaiah is still squawking, despite being in my arms, both because I won't let him have the whisky bottle, and because he has realized, once again, that while I am generally a big Daddy-barrel of fun, I am not currently equipped with lactating breasts, and this being dinner time and me being stingy with the whisky, he'd just as soon have his mama.

Eventually we make our way to the table with clean hands, and get water cups distributed and napkins placed and the appropriate level of utensil technology before the appropriate little people. Sometimes we even do this without sending Wife into tears. I strap the baby into his seat and stuff into his mouth a spoonful of whatever mush is on his menu. We all sit. There is talking and immediate eating, down at the young heathen end of the table, until they are reminded that we are going to bless the food, that we always bless the food, that we have been blessing the food since before they were born, and have done so every day of their short lives, and that if they don't start remembering this soon their lives will not get any longer.

We all hold hands. There is silence. Baby Isaiah has been watching, these past weeks, and now he knows, when we do this, to reach out his mush-covered hand and place it on top of Mama and Daddy's hands. He does this, and smiles at me, and then I pray: Thank you God for this food, though really I am thanking him for all of it, for the good and the bad and especially for them, without whom all my meals would be lonely and quiet and pointless.

I used to think that waiting several years to try hate-filled, murderous thugs bent on destroying Western civilization was evidence that we haven't the courage to confront Islamofacism, but now I see it has all been a sophisticated plan to deny the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his 70 virgins. How very clever and devious of us.

I was afraid of losing our first child, even when she was healthy and near, even before we lost her. I suppose it's natural to fear for them the way we do. It's why we grit our teeth and force a smile when they wave to us from slippery stones in the middle of the creek, or when they get on their bellies and launch themselves as high as they can on the swing, because we know they have to risk themselves if they are ever to be happy, yet we are afraid.

I do a lot of teeth-gritting and smiling. A long while back my dentist made a mouth guard for me, because I was grinding my teeth away in my sleep. I suppose I'm gnawing on all kinds of things in my dreams. The worst dream is the one that bleeds into wakefulness, the one where you hear them calling, only you are inside and they are somewhere out there, and then you wake with your heart pounding in your throat so you can't breathe, and you listen past the sound of its beating in your ears, because maybe they really are calling you, maybe they really have slipped outside into the darkness.

My wife found Isaac down by the creek one morning this week. I was already gone to work, and the sun was just working its way into the sky. He was tromping about in the tall grass on his short white legs, searching for me. It never occurred to me that maybe they fear for us, too. It makes me feel loved and heartbroken all at once, because I think, when I watch them sleep: The fear will settle over you soon enough, little ones.

But I suppose there is no loving, in this world, without fear — at least not for busted-up people like me, and maybe for some of you, too. So we hold them close, and they squeeze us back, and we are thankful for these days and nights when we can keep the darkness safely at bay. We listen for their voices all the same, and we pray they know we'll always be there, that we'll always come running to their cries, as far as our legs will carry us.

This time of year always brings to mind my own graduation experiences, which are paltry. I was valedictorian of my high-school class, but several teachers, administrators, and other denizens of public-school officialdom felt it best that I not speak. My Latin-conscious friends pointed out that this made me a "valetorian." They thought it was funny to declare out loud which syllable I was missing. I did not find this funny.

Not raised to think much of ceremony, I skipped my undergraduate commencement at the University of North Carolina. To this day I don't know who delivered the address. I skipped my University of Michigan graduation too. I can only imagine what sort of nut they let talk.

I have attended other people's graduations, however. They are usually stuffy, tiresome affairs, which is exactly the sort of thing we need more of in civic life. If you think about it, if you consider that greater attention to ceremony might spare us all the spectacle of perfectly normal schoolchildren dressing like fools and whores and mumbling when they speak to their elders, then you might agree about the importance of ceremony. A few more stuffy, dressy social occasions would be a small price to pay if in return every boy in America would pull up his pants and start wearing his baseball cap straight.

So I have attended graduations, but until recently I had never spoken at one. A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to speak at a graduation of sorts, a final lecture in a program for super-sharp young people in which I have played a small teaching role for the past year. When I sat down to compose my notes, it hit me how little wisdom I have to share, and further, how little any of us retains from a speech. I nearly gave up the task altogether. Let's face it: most commencement speeches could be profitably replaced with a dramatic reading of Dr. Seuss's I Had Trouble in Getting to Solla Sollew.

I was close to packing Eli's big Dr. Seuss book for my trip and calling it good, but I dug a little deeper and dredged up a speech. All of the foregoing, you now realize, perhaps regretfully, is simply a lead-in to this excerpt from my first-ever (and likely last) commencement (sort of) address (if you can call it that):

So here we are: you wondering what I'm going to say next, and me wondering what I can possibly say that you'll remember as far as the bathroom, let alone next week or next month or on the day that you might actually need it. This whole enterprise of talking, when you consider it from that perspective — not what we can say, but what they will remember — seems so hopeless that I wonder why we bother at all.

And I think the truth is that when someone writes a letter, or a novel, or composes a speech, he is really talking to himself as much as to you, and you in turn are listening because you are hoping, beneath the well-turned phrase and the dramatic pause, that he will mutter something at himself that is a surprise to the both of you.

In that spirit, I'll start with something that should be no surprise, and see if I can't creep up sideways to some kind of truth, which is the only way, I think, we can ever let ourselves see the truths we are probably most in need of seeing.

And that something is this: each of us is going to die. . .

We know we are going to die, but we are afraid to look it full in the face. At this point you can be forgiven for thinking that I am going to give you an insipid little piece of advice, like: "Live as if there is no tomorrow."

I want you to slap me if I ever start talking like that. In this case the advice is particularly bad, I think, because the problem isn't that we live like there is an endless supply of tomorrows. Yes, we do tend to live like there are plenty of tomorrows, but the problem with not contemplating our mortality is that we end up making our tomorrows stingy, and small. We get so wedded to life, so fearful that something might disturb it, that we rob ourselves — and the people we love, and the people who need us — of living.

After a bit more blabbing I read to them from Frederick Buechner's "The Calling of Voices," which has this beautiful admonition: "...the voice we should listen to most as we choose a vocation is the voice that we might think we should listen to least, and that is the voice of our own gladness." A bit later, Buechner writes: "In a world where there is so much drudgery, so much grief, so much emptiness and fear and pain, our gladness in our work is as much needed as we ourselves need to be glad."

To sum up, my first and only ever commencement address was me doing my best to channel Buechner. A job is often done best, after all, by not doing it yourself. At the end, I wanted to give them a benediction, which felt foolish, because I'm not a preacher, and that place certainly isn't a church, and I don't think most of them cared to hear a sermon. But a benediction is the good word, the speaker's blessing on the listener, offered if only in thanks for the arduous task of listening. So this was my blessing for them, and, now that I think about it, for you as well:

My hope for each of you is that you find your place in the world, because it is waiting for you to find it. May you discover your place, and do what is good and honorable and just, and be battered but not broken. May you know and be known. May you find grace when you need it most, and reject bitterness when it is most tempting. Most of all, at the end of your journey, may you find peace.

It's no Dr. Seuss, but maybe some of them will remember it all the same.

The more I drive, the more I am convinced that the road ragers have a good point. I don't mean those grip-the-wheel-a-little-tighter-and-complain-to-my-therapist-about-it road ragers; I'm talking about the ones who mow down ten or twelve of their fellow citizens with a machine gun. I'm pretty sure that each of their deserving victims, furthermore, is sitting in the passing lane when he meets his maker, going five miles per hour below the speed limit and text-messaging someone.

Yesterday my local NPR station (government-funded, I know, and thank goodness they exist) ran a brief piece on how my local energy company has been muscled into investing in windmills (those who've read Cervantes understand how fitting this is), in return for the hope that our state will eventually let them build something that actually generates power, like a coal-fired generator. The catch is that the energy company announced it will be seeking permission from the state to increase rates 15 percent, to pay for — can you see it coming? — the windmill farm.

This put me in mind of how many states require that health insurers who want to serve customers within their borders provide not just basic health coverage, but funding for things like hairpieces for cancer patients, and podiatry services. Now hairpieces for cancer patients are a good thing, and so are healthy feet, but the effect of such mandates is much the same as if your state forbids you from buying an old pickup with no AC or stereo. Yes, an old stinky truck without an AC is crummy in the summer, but it beats walking, which is what you'll be doing if you're only allowed to buy a Lexus.

We don't think about it that way, however, we simply think about how everyone ought to have everything they need, immediately. And then we drive up the price of health care, or energy, and when people can't afford it, we declare a "market failure." Then some officious Ivy Leaguer conveniently emerges with a blueprint for rational government provision of the service.

And then the next thing you know, we're France. And that, my friends, is just plain un-American.

I'm not sure why Kennedys are on my mind today. I recently read an excerpt from Thurston Clarke's new book on Robert Kennedy in Vanity Fair. I'm not sure which is worse, Clarke's prose, or the fact that the cynicism, fecklessness, and opportunism that characterized this particular Kennedy's political life shines through despite Clarke's best efforts. Perhaps the most revealing part of this article is in the contributor's notes (in the print magazine), where Clarke explains:

"Almost everyone I interviewed, including press and aides, choked up — even people who had only met him for a few hours."

I'm no historian, but it seems to me that if everyone you interview is that enthralled with your subject, then perhaps you don't have a wide enough sample. But perhaps Clarke is more "historian" than historian, in the Sorensen and Schlesinger sense. It seems that most everyone who writes about the Kennedys is either in thrall to a remembered (and reconstructed) sense of what they represented, or in the grip of irrational hatred toward them. Can anyone recommend some evenhanded books on the Kennedy clan?

Turns out I'm not the only one, upon learning of Senator Kennedy's dreadful brain tumor, who found it revealing that he didn't go to Canada for treatment, despite his long advocacy of socialized medicine. Instead, he went to a special center at Duke University for surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital.

But then that's standard procedure for the privileged Kennedy, who routinely voted against allowing poor children stuck in Washington, D.C.'s miserable government school system to benefit from vouchers, even though he and most of his clan would never dream of using said schools. I've always thought that every politician opposed to vouchers ought to be forced to send his own children to government schools, and perhaps the same standard could be applied to advocates of government-run health care, though in this case it would be a death sentence, and hence inhumane.

So thank goodness, for his sake and ours, that Senator Kennedy never got a firm grip on the throat of the U.S. health care system. Above all, we can pray that his suffering and fear will be assuaged, and that he has a return to health, and perhaps with it a dose of wisdom.

So me and the boys are flying down the highway in my truck.

[Editorial aside: there is little better, men, than being able to type that sentence and have it be true.]

Like I said, we're flying down the highway in my truck. My full-sized pickup truck, to be more precise. Me. And my boys. The sun is low over the trees on the distant Kansas horizon, and we're sweaty and tired after a long day of man stuff. I turn up Blues Traveler's "Crash Burn." This is good, driving-with-the-boys-in-a-truck-like-real-men-do music.

So then Caleb says to me: "Dad, this sounds like old-timey music. Like from the 1990's."

Got that, everyone? Richard Marx, Celine Dion, and Melissa Etheridge are old-timey. Caleb may actually be more right than wrong, now that I think about it.

Still, I prefer to think of some music as timeless. Which is why we were listening to Blues Traveler, and why Caleb has an Oscar Peterson CD in his bedroom, and why I'm hoping all those violin (read: fiddle) and piano lessons naturally turn into a folk/jazz/blues ensemble when the boys are older. But until that day, here's some old-timey music for your Monday:

"Sweet Thing," from Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album.

National Review carries today an article about shameless behavior by a number of politicians and judges in my state of Kansas. Despite its conservative reputation, the state has some of the higher taxes and spending in the region, and worse, it tolerates an abortion regime that civilized people might be forgiven for expecting to find in China, not a state where three-quarters of the citizens claim to be Christians.

You might recall that George Tiller performs partial-birth abortions in Wichita, executing healthy, nearly full-term infants by delivering them almost completely and then puncturing their skulls inside the womb. He incinerates the corpses in the same building, such that the car dealership that until recently resided next door had to frequently wash the ash off their vehicles. This is not what outrages our citizens, however, it's the gas prices that has everyone up in arms.

Rather than shaming and ostracizing this monster, our governor, a possible VP for Obama, hosted a private party for him. It's fascinating, isn't it, how we can redefine terms until what this man does every day isn't murder? Regardless of your political views on this matter, if one reads about how this works, about how a pink, wiggling baby is delivered until his neck is exposed, and how Tiller then jabs a pair of scissors into the base of his skull, one can only conclude that someone who does this is an executioner, not a doctor. But no matter, he's an outstanding fundraiser.

Given the state of the Kansas judicial system, it shouldn't be surprising that the former attorney general who investigated Tiller, as well as Planned Parenthood of Kansas, for violating the state's already lenient abortion laws, is the one being harassed by attorneys, and hamstrung by arbitrary legal rules dreamed up by an unaccountable, left-wing Supreme Court. He's rocking the boat, after all. Decent people don't talk about abortion. It's for Bible-thumping kooks. And hey, have you seen those gas prices? Talk about outrageous!

Welcome to Kansas. A great state to live in, unless you happen to be residing in the womb, and so long as you keep your mouth shut about the routine infanticide that gives new meaning to the old moniker, "Bleeding Kansas."

So I've been nominated for two Blogger's Choice Awards: Best Parenting Blog, and Hottest Daddy Blogger.

No, I am not making that second one up. Rumor has it that Marisa Tomei was browsing my site, went to the Flickr pics in the sidebar, and well, who could blame her? I don't know where this rumor started, but you are certainly free to pass it along.

So what you have to do now — right now, this very second — is click on the Blogger's Choice badges to your left, and vote for me. And then tell your friends to do the same. Working together, we can make our votes count for Sand in the Gears, for the children, and for America.

Be sure to check out my latest Wall Street Journal piece, a review of an interesting book on "overparenting."

I want to offer a thought about this multiple-wives business, which every married man in America has thought to himself, but perhaps not voiced. And that thought is: "More wives?!? Are these men nuts?!?

I can understand how it might work on paper. You love your wife, she is essential to your life, most good things come from her hands. So you think to yourself: Two of them would be twice the happiness. But the reality is that the benefit conveyed by an extra wife is not additive. Another wife is like an extra frontal lobotomy, or a third arm — it's just going to mess up whatever was working in the first place.

And that's in the best of situations. Think about it, men: another wife means another dozen opinions to your one, another bundle of feelings to get hurt if you don't hold your mouth exactly right when you ask for the peas to be passed your way, another unsolvable set with which to wrestle on the eve of each gift-giving occasion. It means another mother-in-law, for crying out loud.

I don't blame women for the impossibility of having more than one of them in the house. They're generally more civil, and capable, and better smelling than we men. The problem is us. In his infinite humor, the Almighty has fashioned the most complex of mysteries — woman — and given her to the likes of Barney Fife by whom to be sleuthed. He probably saw Adam trampling his garden, misnaming all the animals, and generally failing to get the ticks out of his own hair, and decided an immediate upgrade was needed. Hence: woman.

This should be plain to any married man. Trying to pull your weight, and keep up with her, and do something at least once in a while to repay her kindnesses, is a full-time job. What man in his right mind, running on the mouse wheel of marriage, thinks it's advisable to add another wheel?

For the longest time there was an awful hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that was an institution unto itself. Everyone who visited was told: You simply must eat at the R_______." So if you visited Chapel Hill, you went.

And had the worst meal of your life. The indigestibility of the food was rivaled only by the surliness of the help, and the cheekiness of the roaches climbing the walls. So why did anyone recommend it? I think the answer is that nobody wanted to look like a fool for having been duped into going himself. Or maybe it was a sadistic desire to see others suffer a similar fate.

But you see where I'm going with this. The first guy to add a few wives didn't have any choice, men being the vain, stubborn creatures that we are. Don't you see? He had to tell the other fellows in the compound that extra wives are awesome.

And thus it began. I imagine that there was a lot of bluster when the federal government, having done such handiwork over the last forty years keeping the nuclear family intact, descended to rearrange the deck. But I'm betting beneath it all, there were a lot of men thinking: It's about time. And probably more than a few women thinking: I hope this doesn't mean I have to keep one of these louts all to myself. I'd rather be celibate. Which is probably a better deal for your average woman, given her alternative, which is your average man. Let's just hope they don't all figure it out.

I had a gun in my hand today, and a snake at my feet, and I didn't shoot him. Had he been in my house, on the other hand, with no way to exit him but to make physical contact, I can't be so sure there wouldn't be gunfire. But still.

It's come to my attention that there are rumors floating around on the Internet, to the effect that I have killed myself in a tractor accident. That's a ridiculous notion, of course, that I could get myself into a fatal tractor accident, for the simple reason that I don't yet have a tractor. I do, however, have weeds taller than three of my four children. And poison ivy growing thick enough to reach out and grab you if you get too close. And a pond full of dead fish.

Yep, apparently you have to keep those ponds aerated. That's what that fountain is in the middle of it for. I thought it was just for show. In the suburbs, the fountains are for show. Out here, they're for making sure your fish and turtles don't all go belly up, making your pond smell like a second lagoon. So now I've got to get on the waders and go scoop up dead creatures from my pond. And adding to the excitement, there's a really big snake in there who seems to think that the deed on this property has Snakey S. Snakerson written on it, instead of Tony "Snakes Give Me the Heebie-Jeebies" Woodlief.

So I want you to picture me in waders, with a net in one hand and a shotgun in the other, because that's the only way I'm going in that stinking pond.

Inside, meanwhile, the walls are mostly painted, and the floorboards and wall trim are up but in need of painting, which means I have about five miles of narrow boards to paint without getting said paint on the walls where they reside. I thought I was a genius because I painted some of them before they went up, but then I stacked them while they were still tacky, plus I forgot that they get about a bajillion nail holes in them, each of which my perfectionist wife smears with stark white putty.

Our bookshelves are up, but there are no books on them, because I have to anchor the shelves to our newly painted walls. This is imperative because we have not one, but two climbers in our house now.

The books are safely (so we thought) in tall stacks of boxes in the garage. We have a lot of books. They are taking up a substantial portion of the garage. This is relevant because for a time there was a stray cat on the property, trying to insinuate himself into our family. Our cat took exception to this. They spent several evenings staring at each other and making that high keening sound that cats make when they want to fight or procreate. Eventually, our cat beat up the other cat and sent him packing.

But not before seeking a peaceful alternative by peeing on everything he could find.

This includes some of the book boxes. I'm not sure which ones. It will be like Christmas in Hell, opening those boxes, waiting to see which books are ruined. I'm hoping it's the Wife's Bodie Thoene books, and not my Everyman's Library editions. Because while I may not know all the ways there are to skin a cat, I can come up with at least one that will suffice.

So that's all for now, because it's beginning to look like rain, and if I don't mow around my barn soon, I am going to lose sight of it. Ever stub your toe on a barn? Not an experience I want to have.

"Done Living," by Justin McRoberts, from his Deconstruction album:

The Great Woodlief Migration of 2008 has begun. Today I spent 12 hours painting in the new house. I also made the flooring guys listen to my music, which ranged from Lyle Lovett to the Hackensaw Boys to Death Cab for Cutie. The probably think I'm deranged, but then they probably don't care so long as the check cashes.

The boys played by our new pond a good part of the day. We saw a dead snake floating in it, which I thought would make a good deterrent for Isaac ("See? He drowned. That's an icky snake in there, isn't it?"). Instead he got a stick and tried to fetch the thing out. For the most part there's nowhere on the property where he can drown unless there's been a hard rain, but now I hear there are bobcats.

Bobcats. I was all set to get a rifle, until a friend explained that his daughter shooed one away with a stick once, when it threatened her chickens.

I'm still getting the rifle, with scope, because I also have a beaver issue. Beavers are only cute in cartoons. In real life they chew down your saplings. There's one working on a sapling to which my back porch has a clear LOS. Best get your affairs in order, Mr. Beaver, because there's a new sheriff in town.

I'm sure after a couple of evenings I'll break down and get somebody to trap him, but it gets the blood up nonetheless, playing sniper from one's own back porch, which I could never do in the old neighborhood, except with an invisible rifle, which is a pity because it was a target-rich environment, if only lawyers and accountants were fair game, and around tax time I think we all agree that they should be.

Tomorrow we load a big truck. I'm pretty sure I would rather take a baseball bat across both knees, but with my luck that's not going to happen between now and the time I have to go pick up the truck. So we'll be loading. I may even tell you about it, if I can figure out how to get my satellite-card Internet doohickey thing to work, because in our new and unnamed locale, there's no cable.

No cable, no city water, no sidewalks, no homeowner's association. Actually there is an HOA, but it has one member, and his name is Tony Woodlief. Further, as King of the Woodlief Homeowner's Association, I hereby decree that there will be no ridiculous walls built at homeowner expense, no strictures against ugly treehouses or redneck-looking sheds, and further, that all members of our HOA can walk around buck raving naked whenever they please.

It's good to be the king.

A new study argues that single parents cost American taxpayers $112 billion, in the form of welfare, education, prison, and other expenses. There's also a pernicious estimate of foregone tax revenue, as if it's unproductive fellow citizens that cost you and me, and not a cabal of Congressmen who spend our money like drunken New York governors at a hooker convention.

A problem with the study, notes an economics professor at Syracuse University, is that a large portion of the men in urban communities have been imprisoned, limiting their earning potential, and hence the positive economic effect of marriage. Other critics note that there is little evidence that marriage programs like those advocated by the backers of this study have any impact. We need better jobs, they argue, and better education.

It seems the hole is much deeper than either left or right is willing to fathom. Does anyone really think that the hundreds of thousands of children born in the worst urban areas without fathers in their lives are deprived of this necessity because these men can't find work? Is it the presence of a job that makes a man live up to his responsibilities? Is it a college degree?

No, it's moral backbone, and there's no program that will implant one where it is absent. And so the cycle is now in a self-fueling frenzy — boys grow up without men to guide them, and girls grow up desperate for male attention, and when they meet, a new crop of neglected children is produced.

Better jobs wouldn't hurt, nor better schools, nor perhaps even programs designed to promote responsible parenting. But this madness will end one life at a time, one man at a time, each willing to set aside his excuses and enter the daily grind that is parenting.

I'm still sorting out, in my own life, what it means to be a man. But I'm certain that you can't be one if you're not willing to care for your children. You can kill the enemy in war, score forty points a game, become CEO of your company — but none of it will make you a man. There are a great many fathers in our country, but significantly fewer men. And given an illegitimacy rate nationwide that is approaching 40 percent, and one closer to 90 percent in the inner cities, this ought to be a topic every pastor covers on a regular basis.

Some of you might appreciate, or be incensed by, my questioning of youth mission trips over at WORLD on the Web.

"Songbird," the Rosie Thomas version, from her album, These Friends of Mine.

Isaac has this thing where he feels like he needs my company any time he has to pee between the hours of midnight and 6 A.M.

Which is inconvenient, because every once in a while I try to sleep between those hours. This morning I was coming out of the bathroom a little before six, freshly shaved and showered, wearing my navy business suit on account of needing to bring some smack today, and there he stood in the bedroom doorway, like a little haunt. Frankly, he scared the bejeesus out of me, but when you're wearing your smack-bringing business suit, you have to play it cool.

So I picked him up, and he pressed his warm chubby cheek against my neck, and I carried him to his bathroom. There we enacted our usual routine, in which he leans back against my legs and tries to fall asleep in mid-pee, and I try to keep him pointed at the interior part of the toilet.

I don't care how nice your suit is, there's just no looking cool in that situation.

Afterward, I carried him to his bed, and tucked him back in. He told me goodnight, even though daylight was beginning to whisper its arrival. Little stinker.

Every night before I put him to bed, I fuss at him not to wake me up. But part of me, the part that has given up on foolish ideals like world peace and a good night's sleep, is glad that he searches me out in the dark hours. I doubt he even remembers these times, but I like to think that some part of him will remember that when he needed me in the darkness, I was there.

"Upward Over the Mountain," by Iron & Wine (Sam Beam), from his album "The Creek Drank the Cradle." You can enjoy a slightly different live version below. Ignore the annoying girl's laugh at the beginning, which isn't actually part of the song:

"We know that we are less than our names: we are our names minus whatever belongs in the empty place. And the question a man is apt to ask in the darkest moments of his life is what salvation can there be, from anywhere, for the man who is less than his name."

Frederick Buechner, "The Sign by the Highway"

This blog is finally getting some of the recognition it deserves. I just wish people could see past the beefcake to my deep consideration of critical issues. But I'll take any recognition I can get.

Just don't ask me to pose for a calendar.

I had business in Las Vegas the last couple of days. Las Vegas is probably my least favorite city. The conference I attended was lodged in Harrah's, which meant that no matter where I wanted to go, I had to wade through rows and rows of slot machines, colonies of Keno players, and other assemblages of people who have come from all walks of life to have a good time.

The thing was, not a one of them was smiling. There were young couples, groups of gawking frat boys, middle-aged Italians, elderly singles being pushed by their offspring in wheelchairs, or perhaps hobbling along on walkers. Men and women of all ages, manners of dress, languages and dialects. All had flown to Las Vegas, the sleepless city, the city that knows how to keep a secret, the city of lights and fortunes, and every blessed one of them looked like someone awaiting execution.

Perhaps people have more fun at the shows and restaurants. But you can get better versions of each in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, heck, even Atlanta. No, what sets Las Vegas apart is the gambling, and perhaps the prostitution. Millions of people visit every year, and I wonder, does a one of them find what he is looking for?

Do they even know what they seek?

Which I suppose can be asked of us all, not just the poor souls sitting numbly in front of those cold machines with the pretty, pretty lights. The answer, I think, is that we are seeking something that will fill the great Empty.

It runs right through the middle of you, this emptiness, and though every good writer has tried to describe it, and though we all know it is there, we are most of us terribly afraid to think about it, which is perhaps why a place like Las Vegas can exist at all.

"Lookin' Forward," by Over the Rhine, on their Drunkard's Prayer album.