Twenty-five years ago last night, I proposed to Mrs. Blather. And as I layed out in horrifying detail in this blog post my beautifully planned, romantic proposal turned into an epic train wreck.

Inexplicably, she said, “yes.” Which immediately made me wonder about her. I, being like Groucho Marx, who once famously said, “I’m not sure I want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”

Of course, she turned out to be a wonderful person to travel through life with–more than a wife–a best friend. Over the last two-and-a-half decades we’ve managed to live in three states; buy, fix up and sell a half dozen houses; and raise three daughters.

Those daughters are 23, 20 and 18 today. The eldest, previously known on these pages as Female Offspring Unit #1 (FOU#1), had a boyfriend. And a few months ago he called and asked if I was available for morning coffee in the next few days. They had been in a serious courtship for months. He had also been a regular and welcome fixture at our dinner table.

So although I can be a little slow, I’m not that slow. I knew what was up. This handsome, flat-bellied whippersnapper was about to muster the unmitigated gall to ask if he could have my firstborn daughter.

Nevertheless I set the coffee appointment and feigned cluelessness.

There was no question as to what my answer would be. Mrs. Blather and I had agreed on numerous occasions that we really, really liked this guy. He clearly loved God. He clearly loved her. And we agreed that should their relationship progress to the point at which marriage was considered, they would have our whole-hearted blessing.

And now it seemed that day was upon me. That blessing was about to be called for.

He asked. But I didn’t put him out of his misery immediately.

I began by describing what it’s like to be the father of a daughter. To hold that baby in your arms and feel for the first time the full weight of the stewardship responsibility.

I described how on numerous occasions when she’s small and vulnerable and dependent . . . you suddenly realize a day will come in which you hand her off to another man. And how unthinkable and strange a concept that seems . . .

How as the baby becomes the little girl, you love being her hero. Her Solomon whose vast brain holds all the answers to her questions . . . questions about where birds go when it rains  . . . or how something cold can burn your skin . . . and other mysteries of the universe. To be her Samson with the strength to lift any burden and fix all things broken . . .

To be the one she flys to when you walk in the door at the end of the day. To look into little brown eyes set in a face shaped just like yours and see nothing but trust and admiration.

To be her first dance partner . . .

I described what it’s like to think about the young man she would one day choose. To know that he was out there, somewhere, right now. To wonder how on earth there could possibly be a worthy boy who could make it to adulthood unscathed and undefiled in this nihilistic, porn-soaked, divorce-ravaged culture.

Will the one she chooses treat her as I’ve endeavored, imperfectly, to treat her mother? With gentleness and faithfulness and selflessness and honor?

“You wonder about these things,” I told him. So you pray. You pray into your daughter’s future. And you lift up that nameless boy to heaven and pray with all your strength that God will place His hand of kindness upon him. That He will draw that boy to Him with relentless, tenacious cords of mercy. And hold him by the scruff of the neck when necessary.

“In other words,” I told him, “Your hope is that when it comes time to choose, that she will choose well.”

The young man nodded, swallowed hard and waited for the verdict.

“Her mother and I believe she has chosen well,” I said. “We love you. We believe in you. Of course, you have our blessing.”

Indeed on numerous occasions Mrs. Blather and I have remarked that this young man has become in many ways the son we never had and the brother our other girls never knew they wanted. A faithful God has answered our prayers.

And as the wedding approaches, we take some solace in knowing that Jesus’ “leave and cleave” mandate falls to the husband, not the wife. (For a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife . . .”) And that this phenomenon is at the root of the old Jewish saying, “A son is a son ’til he’s married, but a daughter’s a daughter for life.”

So yes, my blessing was extended. And then a few months later on a cold late winter night, this happened . . .

This was offered and accepted.

Today preparations are well underway. Both budget and preference are making this a very small, intimate ceremony.

And so it goes. She’s still officially mine for a short while longer. But a handoff of this magnitude doesn’t happen in a day. A heart doesn’t change stewards in an evening. It moves in increments and by degrees. And whether I’m ready or not, this once-and-for-all transfer of residence of one wonderful girl’s heart has already begun. So . . .

Love her well and true, young man.  I have.  I do.

There is no shortage of water on Planet Earth. We’re literally two-thirds covered in the stuff.

There is, however, an acute shortage of fresh, drinkable water in many places. Up til now, desalinization of sea water has been a prohibitively expensive and complex technological exercise. But that may be about to change . . .

. . . thanks to Man’s new best friend “Graphene.”

Graphene is basically a chicken wire-like lattice of plain old Carbon atoms. It’s a substance that is proving to have amazing properties and a myriad of applications.

According to this report, one of them might be filtering sea water. A Graphene water filter promises to be anywhere from 100 to 1000 times more efficient than the current state-of-the-art reverse osmosis plants currently in wide use by the Saudis. (The desert oil emiriates of the Middle East demonstrate that desalinization isn’t a problem if you have unlimited funds.)

But drought happens. Always has. Always will. So for the rest of the world, this technological breakthrough holds out the promise of a radically improved quality of life for billions.

At NRO:

Obama Turns His Back on Israel at the U.N.

I am, by disposition, a glass-half-full kind of guy. I am predisposed by the Manufacturer to see silver linings, upsides and bright spots in dark situations. With that in mind, now that I’ve had a couple of days to process the recent Supreme Court decision on Obamacare, here are a few thoughts.

Certainly conservatives are almost universally dismayed (to put it mildly) that Chief Justice Roberts sided with the liberals on the court in the decision that upheld Obamacare. I am among them.

Nevertheless there is a conservative rational for Roberts’ vote, opinion and calculus. Dr. Charles Krauthammer does a pretty good job of summarizing it here. Powerline’s John Hindraker has a slightly different but still sympathetic view here. I would explain the outcome this way.

There were two conservative principles in play in this case. On one hand, there is the principle of reigning in the runaway growth/power of the national government at the expense of state prerogatives and individual liberty.

On the other hand, we conservatives had long decried activist courts striking down laws legitimately passed by duly elected representatives just because an ideologically hostile court discovered some previously-unknown “penumbra” in the Constitution.

Not long ago the citizens of the State of California voted overwhelmingly to codify the definition of marriage as being between one-man and one-woman–thereby premptively shutting the door to the redefinition of marriage in ways that would include not only gay marriage but bigamy, polyamory, incest and other creative arrangements “between consenting adults who love each other.”

And yet the U.S. Ninth Circuit recently struck down that law on contorted, absurdist, touchy-feely grounds. This is precisely the kind of “judicial activism” conservatives loathe and conservative judges like Roberts have vowed to eschew.

Thus the dilemma. The four right-leaning or libertarian-ish judges viewed the first principle–reigning in the reach of the national government– as being the more compelling of the two principles. Roberts, obviously, picked the other one.

We rightly despise liberal courts’ proclivity to “legislate from the bench.” This is precisely what Roberts’ opinion says he was trying to avoid:

“We do not consider whether the Act embodies sound policies. That judgment is entrusted to the Nation’s elected leaders. We ask only whether Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the challenged provisions.”

If only the liberal justices with whom Roberts sided had the same philosophy. How much would you like to wager that the next time a big piece of conservative social legislation comes before the Court, those other four justices encompassed in Roberts’ “we” above will suddenly lose their commitment to judicial restrain and Constitutionality.

Liberals now mindlessly and reflexively tend to view the Supreme Court as a type of super-legislative body that should decide what policies “ought” to be (irrespective of what the Constitution says or doesn’t say) and then rule accordingly.

Hilariously Sadly, after the SCOTUS handed down the Obamacare decision, I saw numerous headlines at news site that actually said, “Court Passes Obamacare“–as if the judges were legislators voting on a bill. Of course, this is precisely how libs view the courts, but the rest of us generally know better.

Frankly, the far-better, healthier-for-the-republic, more-conservative approach for preventing the rolling economic and cultural catastrophe of Obamacare is to elect Romney to the White House and fill Congress with men and women pledged to repeal it. And then legislatively yank the thing out of the law books by the roots.

Indeed this is precisely what Chief Justice Roberts clearly hopes will happen. In his majority opinion he wrote:

It’s not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices.

True enough. In strictly Constitutional terms, if the American people are dull-witted or greedy-for-other-people’s-money enough to put Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, Dodd, Rangel & Co. in charge of the nation–as they did via the elections of ’06 and ’08–it’s not technically the role of the courts to reverse them–provided the legislation passes some generous minimum level of Constitutionality.

Robert’s opinion explicitly states that he found the Affordable Health Care Act cleared that minimum level–but it is hard to read it without concluding that Roberts had to squint, look-crosseyed, and directly repudiate everything Obama and the bill’s backers claimed about it in order to do so.

So that moves the battle for economic freedom to November. Some, though not all, knowledgable political observers think the Court’s decision enhances Romney’s chances. I pray they’re correct.

As I said, I’m an optimistic guy. But if, come November, Republicans don’t take the White House and healthy majorities in both houses of Congress facilitating an immediate reversal of Obamacare and Obama’s toxic blend of nanny-state socialism and Crony Capitalism, it’s going to be tough to keep alive any rational hope for a renewal of freedom and opportunity.

American decline will be baked into the cake. Irreversible. And it’s hard to see a silver lining in that.

I’ve always been a geography nerd. And I’m obsessed with maps. So a few minutes ago I stumbled across a photograph that explains why . . .

If I was Charles Foster Kane, this would be my “Rosebud.” When I was four or five my Mom bought me the U.S. map puzzle depicted above. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the pic. What a flood of memories.

The pieces are made of wood. Man, I loved working that thing. To this day, I see that puzzle in my head when I need to visualize the relative positions of the states. It also explains why I’m always a little fuzzy about the the geography of New England. (All those tiny states were fused together into one piece.

When our girls were little, I looked in vain for anything like it.

{Update: Bad link fixed. Sorry.)

A kindergarten graduation program in the Gaza Strip:

More over at Powerline.

This is a blog post I drafted in my mind back during the heat of the Republican primaries. It was more timely then than now. And it’s almost certain to offend more people than it pleases. So naturally, here I go . . .

There has been much speculation about how Evangelicals voters will respond to the nomination of Mitt Romney–a Mormon. Will the enthusiasm and support Republican nominees usually enjoy from Evangelicals be dampened with a Mormon at the top of the ticket? Will a critical percentage of them simply stay home on election day?

Four years ago when Mitt Romney was battling John McCain for the nomination, much was made of a survey which indicated that a majority of evangelical Christians would not vote for a Mormon candidate for president. Of course, that was before they  experienced three years of “Christian” Obama–the most pro-abortion, pro-union, anti-capitalist, arguably anti-American president in our nation’s history.

Perhaps that’s why recent surveys reveal evangelicals are warming up to the idea of voting for a Mormon–a man with whom they share a lot of common values if not a common faith. Nevertheless, some still consider the prospect alarming, as this new book by my old friend and co-author Stephen Mansfield testifies.

Some Food for Thought for My Brethren with Mormon Qualms

I hear some of my fellow evangelicals declare that they can’t vote for a Mormon because Mormons believe weird stuff . . . stuff that’s not in the Bible . . . stuff we evangelicals view as heretical. I’ve heard more than one crack about “holy underwear” in the White House.

But hold on . . . Here’s the thought that frequently occurred to me during the heat of the Republican primary.

Romney’s two principle challengers were Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich–both Roman Catholics. From a strictly evangelical perspective, don’t Roman Catholics believe a lot of weird stuff? Stuff that’s not in the standard evangelical Bible? Stuff that we Protestants at one time viewed as so heretical that rivers of blood were shed for the freedom to dissent.

We could play a game. Name a bizarro Mormon doctrine and I’ll name an equally bizarre Catholic one. I’ll see your magic underwear and raise you a transubstantiation. I’ll see your Golden Tablets and raise you a papal infallibility or a perpetual virginity of Mary.

Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. I’m not calling for evangelical avoidance of Catholic candidates. On the contrary, I think the support many evangelicals gave Rick Santorum was appropriate and reasonable.

I’m saying I’m puzzled by evangelicals who can think nothing of voting for Rick Santorum but recoil at the thought of voting for Mitt Romney.

I personally am less interested in a candidate’s personal faith than I am his political philosophy and the policies he or she will pursue if elected.

Frankly, some of the worst and most disastrous presidents we’ve had over the last five decades were church-going Protestant Christians:

• LBJ (Disciples of Christ)
• Richard Nixon (Quaker)
• Jimmy Carter (Southern Baptist)
• Bill Clinton (Southern Baptist)
• Barack Obama (United Church of Christ)

Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was initially viewed with a lot of wariness by evangelicals because he “never went to church.” I don’t think the country can survive many more church-going presidents like Carter or Obama.

Follow your own conscience. But as for me and my house, we’ll vote for the most conservative electable candidate irrespective of what he believes about God or underwear.

Not a Nickel’s Worth of Difference?

Of course there are those who contend it doesn’t matter which party’s candidate get’s elected in November. That there’s “not a nickel’s worth of difference between them.” I usually hear this assertion from my friends who have classified all candidates for president into two groups:

1. Candidates who are named Ron Paul
2. Candidates not named Ron Paul and who are therefore statist, globalist, insufficiently libertarian and evil.

From these friends I hear that the Candidate-Not-Named-Ron-Paul will still allow the country to drift in a statist direction–if admittedly less severely than Obama will shove it. (And trust me, if Obama is reelected, his second term will make his first look like his right-wing phase.)

I’m sorry, but the argument that if Car A will take you toward a cliff at 80 miles per hour and Car B will take you toward the same cliff at 35 miles per hour, it doesn’t really matter which car you climb into strikes me as a ridiculous one.

So, come November, I’ll be casting my vote for Romney. And I’ll feel great about it.

About a year ago I wrote a couple of ranty blog posts about the way husbands and fathers are portrayed in television commercials.  These:

Madison Avenue’s Go-To Guy – The Clueless Husband/Father

More on Doofus Dad/Hapless Husband

As Providence would have it, these posts came to the attention of Joshua Levs, a writer for CNN, working on a piece for CNN.com centered on that very topic. He shot me an email asking if he could interview me for the piece. I agreed. And a few days ago it published:

No more dumb old dad: Changing the bumbling father stereotype

I was a little nervous about the angle the piece would take (it being CNN and all) but I thought Levs produced a very good, very fair piece of journalism.

Sadly, the advertising industry’s lazy habit of defaulting to the Doofus Dad/Hapless Husband schtick shows no signs of diminishing. The most recent example that has my wife and I rolling our eyes is the Valspar paint spot in which the standard “all-knowing, all-wise, ever-patient” wife asks the standard “bewildered” husband to grab a magenta paint chip from rack at the home improvement store.

It didn’t make it into the CNN article but one question I was asked by the author was, “What’s the harm?” In other words, why should we be alarmed or dismayed about this trend?

My response was, “The issue isn’t whether this trend of pandering to women by disparaging men creates a specific harm. The interesting question is what the trend reveals about us as a culture.” I contend that a culture that happily holds fatherhood, husband-hood up for consistent ridicule and mockery is a culture in trouble.

Finishing the most recent book project meant I could finally take a weekend to run up to the hills of southeastern Oklahoma and check in on my mom.

It’s been more than a year-and-a-half since dad passed away so she usually has a healthy “honey do” list for me on those too-rare occasions I can visit. This was no exception. In fact, two nights before I arrived a thunderstorm knocked down a large tree behind the house.

A chainsaw was borrowed and the fallen tree was dispatched.

The demise of the tree above is good news for the tree it was crowding–a peach tree that was so laden with fruit this last weekend that several of the branches were bowing nearly to ground level.

Went to church with mom on Sunday morning. It’s the same small sanctuary I attended between the ages of 5 and 18. The aisle I walked at the age of eight looks the same. The same pews are in place. Only the upholstery color has changed.

My best friend from high school is now the Music Minister/Associate Pastor there. He has succeeded in introducing a few touches of modern worship to the place. They still sing the old hymns but now instead of turning to Hymn #245 in the Baptist Hymnal, the words are projected onto a screen. And a few classic praise choruses have been gingerly inserted into the song service. Nothing too radical or current. But progress is progress in this corner of Oklahoma.

After a long, dry period of blog neglect my good intentions here are to now resume regular posting (providing the work crew currently resurfacing the road to hell doesn’t need my good intentions for paving material.)

Pretty much all of my discretionary hours over the last nine months have been wholly owned by a book project. As you may know, I took a real job back in January of ’11 because I and my family were in the habit of eating and not sleeping in cardboard boxes beneath overpasses. That pushed book writing into nights, weekends,

This book isn’t one of mine. It’s another of my “ghost” projects. This will bring the number of published books I’ve written or edited for other people over the last 18 years to “34.” That’s not quite two books per year for not quite two decades–but there have been some years recently in which I wrote four books. Of the previous 33 books, three have made the New York Times non-fiction list. And precisely two have contained acknowledgement with my name in it.

I’m not complaining. That’s the deal with ghostwriting. Ghosts are supposed to be invisible. It’s in the job description.

Of course, those years of cranking out a book every three or four months were those in which I didn’t have a fulltime, 8-5 job. I was self-employed or freelancing. This book I just finished last week was begun last September and was supposed to be  complete by the end of December. That’s right. I was supposed to submit the manuscript almost five months ago.

Blessedly, I had a profoundly patient client and publisher. The whole ordeal made it abundantly clear that books are not going to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future.

In any event, I now have a significant chunk of my life back so blogging will recommence, along with exercise, recreational reading, date nights with my bride and other evidences of having a life.

Stay tuned.