This month’s Prairie Panicle is centered around online reading, for a variety of reasons. I’m still working through some hard-copy books that aren’t ready for a full update yet. I have encountered some particularly good stuff online in the past month that has also spawned other thoughts and ideas which I felt obligated to share below, as they have not merited a standalone essay (yet).
A Blonde Report
In case you’ve been on the edge of your seat since last month, the Stamford Bulldogs fell in the regional semifinals of the Class 2A Texas high school baseball playoffs. You can read my thoughts on the end of the season here, accompanied by a fun picture with the baseball team. Yet, my hair is still blonde. Last month’s Panicle was written in the immediate aftermath of my blonding, but I went back to the salon later in the month and got the color re-done to reduce the yellow and make it a true platinum blonde. This certainly helped my wife’s view of the matter. I even have an appointment next week to touch up my roots and keep it looking fresh.
“It’s only hair” is something that teenagers have said for years in response to chagrined parents, but I’ll stand by that myself. I’ve also enjoyed the conversations with various female friends who have been coloring their hair for years and want to know about my experiences with changing hair texture, breakage, color-safe shampooing, and all the increasing manner of work required to keep your hair healthy when it has been bleached and colored. If you, my reader, have colored your hair for any extended period of your life, I now understand and admire your effort more than I did before!
Like I said last month, life is short. It is too short, in fact, for us to not have a little fun and try some harmless adventures even if they can be surprising to folks who know us. I am not telling you to color YOUR hair (but I definitely will encourage you in that regard), but that fun thing that you want to try? Express yourself? Find a new hobby? Maybe consider a new career path that will give you more satisfaction? Go for it.
What I’ve Written
Important instructions are not always easy to follow. Nothing illustrates that better than one particular line in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Will Be Done.” This phrase plays a prominent role in “Jayber Crow,” so I worked out a few of my thoughts on the matter while discussing Jayber’s as well.
We celebrated Memorial Day in Stamford with our first “Decoration Day” ceremony. It was small and simple, but deeply meaningful to all who attended. I wrote about that experience and how we hope to continue building our preservation and promotion of local culture.
For high school graduation season, I republished last year’s two-part essay “Needing to Want to be From Here.” Part 1 discusses why it matters that our high school graduates should be want to be from here. Part 2 uses some inspiration from Caesar Augustus to look at how to make it happen.
This led in to “Kids These Days,” a look at the flawed human notion to view prior generations as more virtuous. Valuing present and future generations of kids (instead of griping about “kids these days”) is the only way you can expect them to be the future of a rural community.
That set me up to write an essay that’s been rolling around in my head for several years. “17” asks a question posed by Cross Canadian Ragweed: are you always seventeen in your hometown? It is my estimation that a community should work to ensure that its children *don’t* feel that way, if it wants them to participate in the community as adults.
Online Reading: The Layman and Leopold
is a self-described “Forester in the US southeast by trade. Bible nerd by nature. Disciple of Jesus by grace.” He writes an always excellent and thought-provoking newsletter called . We first interacted a while ago on our mutual appreciation for both Aldo Leopold and Biblical concepts of land stewardship.If you’ve read “A Sand County Almanac” (if not, stop what you’re doing and make plans), you know that the great Leopold was troubled by the Christian faith. In particular, he was troubled by the history of despoiling lands by all cultures rooted in Abrahamic faiths, beginning with the Israelites in Canaan and continuing to westward expansion across North America. Leopold died in 1948, but our culture’s last 75 years of land use would not have improved his attitude. Sadly, Leopold saw these actions as a feature of the Abrahamic faiths, not a bug.
As one who is both a Christian and an adherent to many of Leopold’s views on land use, this has long bothered me. Leopold’s disdain for Christian land use is rightly borne out of centuries of Christian societies wreaking havoc on the land, but that havoc never felt truly Scriptural to me. Reading books like Ellen Davis’s excellent “Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture” helped me understand that the *actual* Abrahamic calling for land use is one that endorses and supports Leopold’s vision of land use. Ostensibly Christian societies who behaved otherwise have simply mangled, misunderstood, or simply ignored the Lord’s directives for care of Creation.
That’s an unintended tangent to my endorsement of Wayne’s writing over at The Layman, but our shared understanding of these concepts is one reason I was immediately drawn to his thoughtful writing. Recently, he tackled the concept of voting (and not voting!) Christian in an essay titled “Is political abstinence an act of privilege?” He has some provocative thoughts and I do not agree with all of them, but I am glad he wrote them down to make me think. He invited others to participate in this topic and
recently wrote “Politics, Privilege, and Participation: A Response” at “A New Cathedral”. He has also invited me to write something and I plan to do so as soon as I can get my thoughts aligned. Stay tuned! In the meantime, read and subscribe to Wayne’s work.Online Reading: The High Plains Poet
My poet pal from the Greater Umbarger-Amarillo Metro Area
has some big news! He got a haircut, organized his desk, and inked a book deal to publish a collection of poetry. I could not be more excited to hear this, for Seth’s success as a full-time writer and poet and because I cannot wait to read it. He also has poetry about Palo Duro Canyon featured in the semi-annual “Local Culture” publication of Front Porch Republic that is winding its way to subscribers through the mail now.Online Reading: Perils of Babel
I am on record as a fan of
’s wise writing at . Last month, I shared his excellent piece on Apple’s depressing and soul-crushing new ad. Nate just released an excellent follow-up called “The Tower of Apple,”in which he works through how our current techno-obsessed society might share some comparisons with those doomed denizens in the Book of Genesis who built the Tower of Babel.For further reading on our tendency to constantly build new Towers of Babel, I recommend Wendell Berry’s essay “Two Minds.” I first encountered this provocative essay in an excellent Berry essay collection called “Citizenship Papers.” It also appears in “The World-Ending Fire,” which is something of a greatest hits essay collection that I recommend to many people. These essays were selected by Paul Kingsnorth (more about him below) and Kingsnorth writes a very good foreword. I also found “Two Minds” available for download as a PDF if you want to read it that way.
Online Reading: From the UK to the World
is one of our greatest living Christian agrarian writers, so he doesn’t need my endorsement, but I would encourage all my like-minded folks to subscribe to his work at . He is deeply thoughtful and inspiring and his atheist-pagan-Buddhist backstory gives him a particularly unique perspective to read. He is currently writing a “Fifty Holy Wells” series that posts early on Sunday mornings in the United States and it’s usually my first read when I wake up on Sundays. Each essay in this series is about a different holy well in Ireland, with pictures, history, and Paul’s experiences visiting the place. Some wells are abandoned, some are still well-visited, and others have been trampled by modernity. Each has a history that dates back centuries and Paul uses their stories to illustrate the history of Christianity in Ireland, which is really incredible. West of 98 Store
The West of 98 bookstore at Bookshop.org now has three lists: my Top Texas Books, all the books referenced on the Rural Church and State podcast, and a catch-all Essential West of 98 reads. I’m hoping to steadily convert and expand that final list into a series of lists categorized by topic, as my time allows. We’ve sold several books so far (perhaps more than I anticipated) and I greatly appreciate the support! The commission on these purchases go towards towards the West of 98 project. Even if you never buy my recommendations, do your online book shopping at Bookshop! Their profits support independent bookstores. Amazon doesn’t need more money.
Listening Recs
Podcasting with a pastor means that the pastor gets quite busy with church camps and such during the summer! We will record the next “Rural Church and State” podcast soon, but here’s a link to our introduction to voting and my Wendell Berry primer. Something special is also coming at the West of 98 podcast(!) next week!
As always, thanks for reading along and supporting my work! Your feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.
Thanks James for the mention. Look forward to you throwing your hat into the ring!
Thanks for the shout out! I definitely enjoy reading your stuff on any of our overlapping interests. Looking forward to your thoughts on voting! Local politics where there's community buy-in can definitely be a beautiful thing, and it sure seems like Stamford might be an example of it.