How To Make Your Work Easy

And one more thing from Guideposts -- Norman Vincent Peale's advice on how to make work easy. It's a cool combination of the practical ("Plan your work") and the spiritual ("At the start of each day pray about your work").

If I Were Starting My Life Again

The Guideposts site has reprinted a wonderful essay from 1979, in which a father describes what he would do differently if he had his life to live over again. His words are wise, a wonderful reminder to harried parents like me to cherish the joy of our children instead of correcting or ignoring them. He ends with an image I hope to carry with me as a parent -- to be "God's love with skin on."

"Why Conservatives Can't Govern" by Alan Wolfe

Check out this article from Washington Monthly: "Why Conservatives Can't Govern" by Alan Wolfe. This quote summarizes the key idea: "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well." So Bush et al. have created bigger -- yet more incompetent -- government. That explains a lot.