bierkergaard

Luke 17:21 "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." I watched a good deal of both the Republican and Democratic Conventions. Citizenship requires an informed and educated populace and I feel as if I should do my part to hear out the respective platforms and speakers. I sense Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are both men who care about their country and are serving for the right reasons, whether I agree with their positions or not. Yet, I do think we are breaking the political system by putting far too much hope in it. We expend a great deal of resources pulling causes one way or another and I have to wonder if all of this political rope pulling, like a Tug-Of-War, leads to exhaustion and stalemates. Or worse yet, a frayed society and even the snapped rope of cynicism. The genius of America was voluntary civic associations and charities, not government as god. Government has a charter to enforce contracts, promote

1 Sam 13:20 So whenever the Israelites needed to sharpen their plowshares, picks, axes, sickles, they had to take them to a Philistine blacksmith. I was having a conversation with my brother Matt yesterday about gardening. His neighbor spent a good deal of the afternoon working in the prosperous garden in his yard to the left while my brother and I were on the porch drinking beer and shooting the breeze. To the right, was my brother's garden; a gnarled mess of tomatoe plants. Too many plants, too close, creates a ghetto garden. Some separation, fewer plants, actually empowers growth. I have learned that lesson. Quantity is great, but first focus on quality and be careful of compromise. So, I was sharing this lesson with my brother as well as reflecting on how in America we have a lot of land that is basically uncapitalized and unproductive, unless one counts green grass as somehow valuable for anything more than impressing neighbors and wasting valuable time on yard cosme

Yesterday, I went for a hard and hot run in Valley Forge Park. The circle path was five miles and change. However, I went left when I should have gone right, adding at least another three miles and thirty minutes to the run, into the rising sun heat maw of the morning. No getting in and out, I was going to sauna sweat for a prolonged period. 8 miles. I can gauge the exertion of the run to some degree by the sweat index on my shorts. Starting at the top, the further the sweat travels down the shorts like a crick over the banks, the harder I know the run has been. There are other variables of course. Like how hot it is, whether there is a breeze, if I have some shade. But all things being more or less equal, yesterday's run was extreme. My shorts were soaked. No island of dry anywhere. Again, as I have written before, I don't pull crap like this just so I have stuff to write about. Error, particularly with directions, comes naturallly and it is only retrospectively where a