Europe is tottering on the brink and now the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland is spewing ash again. Flights across Europe are being canceled. Not helpful.

Of course, the challenges Europe faces are almost entirely a result of pursuing policies that the current American government would love to put in place here. Among them, the strengthening of labor unions, the massive expansion of jobs in the government sector, nanny-state regulation of virtually every realm of life, and daunting regulatory disincentives for hiring new employees.

All it takes is a couple of generations of cradle-to-grave government “security” promises to produce a population that will riot when the day of reckoning finally comes. It has come to Greece. It’s right around the corner for Portugal, Spain and Britain. A populace that has swallowed the lie that the government can and should control everything from the price of food to the wages ditch diggers and doctors deserve to receive is a mob that will turn ugly when market forces do what they inevitably and invariably do.

There are still plenty of folks in this country who claim we need to emulate the policies of the European nations. And they do so with a straight face. And so talk among liberals and Democrats of adding a VAT tax to our system of individual and corporate income taxes grows.

This oil spill off of Louisiana is a big deal. In any time or any context it would be a tragedy–both environmental and economic. But in this particular time and context–a fragile, reeling economy and the most inept and misguided national leadership since Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neil were running the show in Washington–it is potentially devastating. It is therefore a near certainty that the government will learn all the wrong lessons and prescribe solutions with negative unforeseen consequences.

Here The Pragmatic Capitalist offers “Ten Reasons to Worry.”  I prefer to think of them as ten reasons to be glad I’m a Christian, in Texas, and out of the market.

First, thanks to all for the kind comments and emails regarding my post about my mother from a few days ago. Those comments put me in mind of something I’ve been meaning to do with this blog for while now. Allow me to explain.

A little more than three years ago, I staked a claim to this happy little corner of the wild, wild web and started cultivating organically grown blog posts. Five-hundred-ninety-four posts later, it is clear that my writing here can be classified into two broad categories:

1. Musings about family, life, and faith along with quirky humor centered on retro ephemera.

2. Analysis and commentary about politics and the culture.

Given the above, it’s not surprising that I seem to have developed two distinct groups of readers. There are those who come here primarily for category 1, and another group that values the category 2 content.

In other words, there are those who come for the heart-warming and those who come for the blood-boiling. Those who come for cheer and those who come for drear. Some for witticism, some for criticism.

There is, of course, a little overlap between the two groups. But not enough to keep me from wondering if I should split the content into two separate areas.

At some point in the next few days I’ll be splitting the blog into two zones and changing the home page to create two corresponding doorways. Going forward from there, you’ll be able to bookmark whichever side of my brain you find most interesting.

As always, I’m humbled and grateful that you find your way here at all. Thank you.

Michael Ramirez is arguably the most gifted political cartoonist to come along in a generation. If he were liberal he would have a shelf full of Pulitzer prizes at home. Here’s one of his latest:

More of his stuff here.

I have written here occasionally about my father and his ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s—an enemy he has fought valiantly but to whom he continues to lose weekly ground. (See here, here, and here.)

I haven’t written much about the woman who daily displays equal valor in taking care of him—without complaint or a discernible trace of self-pity. She has a story, too. What follows is a piece of it.

*****

The little girl wearing dark, short-cropped hair and a hand-sewn dress stands beside the open grave. A plain casket is gently lowered into the earth. She is five.

Five is old enough to understand the meaning and implications of the words, “Your mother has died.” But not nearly old enough to carry more than few treasured swatches of wispy memory fabric away from that dusty cemetery in Grady County, Oklahoma. It is a cruel paradox.

There had been abdominal pain and fever. Appendicitis was the eventual diagnosis. A simple appendectomy was successful. But a post-operative infection set in. And in 1936 the mass production of penicillin lies in a future three years distant.

In the coming years the little girl will savor sweet stories about her mother and study the pitiful handful of pictures. And imagine. Those pictures reveal a beautiful woman. The stories tell of a Christian faith, a lovely singing voice and the making of a poor but happy home continuously filled with song and laughter.

She was educated, a rare thing among women in this time and place. She had graduated from the Oklahoma Normal School in far-away Edmond, Oklahoma. Decades later, a son-in-law she would never know—the husband of that little girl—graduated there after the name had been changed to Central State College; and a son of theirs would know that campus as Central State University.

At graveside, the little girl holds the hand of a fidgety toddler. She has been instructed to take care of her little sister during the service. It is a charge she takes seriously. She holds tightly. She is responsible.

Indeed, over the next decade she will continue to take care of her as best she can. It seems my mother became a mother far sooner than should ever be asked.

She has three older brothers but they will be needed in the fields. The Great Depression is at its lowest depth. And the Dust Bowl drought that is ravaging Oklahoma and much of western Kansas and Texas is at its height.

The weathered, grief-wracked face of the man beside the coffin belongs to her father. He is a strong man. Some would say a hard man. But what he is facing has shattered many good men. And he will come through unbroken.

He is a tenant farmer. He does not own the land he works. A wealthy man who lives a universe away in Kansas City owns the house and the land and receives a percentage of the proceeds of each harvest. When there is a harvest.

Her father will actually count himself fortunate in this regard. In better times he will joke about not having lost anything in the Great Depression because he didn’t have anything to lose. In fact, in those grim years, several relatives who do own land will find themselves foreclosed upon and homeless. These will come to live with my mother and her family—one whole household actually taking up residence in their chicken coop.

When she and her sister are old enough, they will join their older brothers in the fields, pick cotton, haul water, and by way of callused, bleeding hands earn a deep understanding of that old saying about “a hard row to hoe.”

Store-bought candy will be an almost unthinkable luxury, so from time to time she will slip into the empty kitchen and sneak a couple of little pebble-sized pieces of hardened brown sugar from the counter canister. One for her. One for her sister.

Her father will remarry as quickly as possible. Perhaps this marriage is born of some genuine affection, but it is also clearly born of necessity. He has a farm and five children. Farming is a partnership and he has lost his partner. As a result, five more children will come along in quick succession, the first three of them girls. This results in more responsibility for my mother (the oldest girl with six younger siblings) and even less time and attention devoted to her own needs.

Thus it is always “others.” There will be the time her little sister reveals that her heart’s desire is to take piano lessons, but is crushed when told there is no money for such extravagances. So for a year my mother will skip her school lunch several days a week and use the money to pay for those lessons herself.

It won’t be the last time she will know real hunger. When she seeks to follow in the footsteps of the mother she never really knew by pursuing a college education, there will be no money for that either. But she will find a way.

She will enroll at the Oklahoma College for Women in nearby Chickasha, rent a small room from a kind couple, and work nightly at the local movie theater. Some weeks, her primary source of calories will be the leftover popcorn she is allowed to bring home after work.

She will graduate, marry, and raise a family of her own. At the age of 40, with three small children and one more on the way, she will earn her Master’s degree. Her gifts to her children will be music and books and robust work ethics. But her principal endowment will be a real and enduring faith. The kind of faith that sustains in hard times.

And though it is clear the little girl can and will work her way out of poverty, it is also true that the scars of poverty never completely work themselves out of the girl. And still, ever and always, it will be “others.”

As so it is. Now in this, another stern season, she looks after her husband of 55 years as, in many ways, a cruel disease renders him by degrees a child.

So she holds his hand tightly. She won’t let go. She is responsible.

I’m dazed and disoriented. The last thing I remember clearly, I was trying to move in the middle of a snow storm in mid-February. Two weeks later I think I went to Alaska for a week to research a book. Or was that a dream? There was snow there, too. When I got back I dove into an insane schedule of daily writing that produced about 45,000 semi-coherent, quasi-literate words over the next seven weeks. I think it snowed again in there somewhere.

Then I woke up this morning and the forecast was for sun and 90.

Oh, and somewhere along the way i misplaced about 30 pounds.

Aaaaand, I’m back.

Finished final tweaks on the new book manuscript and saw it sent off to the publisher today. I am still constrained from saying anything about the subject matter here on the interwebs until the publisher makes an official announcement. Nevertheless, hopes are high. I can tell you that this is a co-written project with Stephen Mansfield, just like the Paul Harvey book.

Speaking of the Paul Harvey book, it won a “major award” the other day. It won a “Retailer’s Choice Award” in the Biography category. Christian bookstore owners and managers vote on their favorites in each category. Thanks Christian booksellers!

Regular blogging should return now. Thanks for your patronage.

James Lileks has a great little piece up over at Pajamas Media: ‘Question Authority’? Dude, That’s sooo 2008

. . . and then answers his own question.

My preferred comparison models for what Obama-Pelosi-Reid are doing to this country have been Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and, most horrifying of all, California.

But  Richard Rahn makes a strong case for Argentina. Check it out.

. . . to bring you a lame excuse.

Dear readers, I’m in the final few days of working on the first draft of the new book. Thus the utter neglect of the blog the last few weeks.

I’ll resume blathering with feckless abandon in a few days. (wondering . . . if someone is not “feckless” does that mean they possess ample “feck”?)

Much to tell. Can’t wait to tell the story of how an intractable two-year-old $2,000 problem of mine was resolved for me last week, by this thing.

Plus I’ll be rolling out a new approach to presenting content here on the Blather blog. Thanks for your patience and patronage.

In the meantime, ponder this.