By Jim Van Der Pol, Kerkhoven, Minnesota — The telemarketer who was trying to convince me that I could “earn” a 90% return to a play on the stock market was surprised to hear that I didn’t deal with criminals. He was so surprised to hear this that he hung on long enough to hear me say that I made my living by working for it, rather than trying to cheat someone else out of it.

Telemarketers, who pop up about three per day on our two phone lines, are closely related to the mosquito in my view. Being a human invention, they may in fact be worse. If we think in Christian terms, we have to reckon with the knowledge that the mosquito is part of God’s creation, and that therefore He is well pleased with it even if we are not. Continue reading “Adding some nesting to our boomer mentalities”

By Joel McNair, Belleville, Wisconsin — Talk of $200 per barrel crude oil and seven-dollar per gallon gasoline grabs headlines and earns sound bites, and indeed these things may be reality sooner rather than later. Or they may not.

History and common sense tell us the current oil price trend line will not continue unabated. My own guess, shared by others but still mainly conjecture, is that a severe global economic slowdown created by a nasty combination of U.S. fiscal problems and entwined energy/food price inflation will depress oil demand over the next few years. U.S. use is already dropping, and the rapid pace of growth in India and China will be slowed, although probably not reversed. Continue reading “Making do at the end of the easy oil era”