The Deliberate Agrarian Blogazine January 2013

Dateline: 31 January 2013

This is where I worked. But no more.

There is a best-selling book by Elizabeth Gilbert with the simple title of, Eat, Pray, Love. I haven’t read that book (and probably never will) but the title caught my eye and got me to thinking.... 

If I were to write a book about my personal journey from wage slavery to full-time, home-based, self-employment, I would title it Pray, Work, Wait. It would be a story about delayed gratification and the satisfaction that comes only from praying, and working, and waiting, for many years, before a dream that was once so distant became a sweet reality.

That gratification came for me this month. I have finally quit my job as a civilian employee at a maximum security state prison. I started the job in May of 2000. In the nearly eight years of blogging here, I have written about my prison job only once (Here). I ended that essay with this statement:

“...when God makes it clear to me that I should leave, I will leave. I will shake the dust of that place off my feet and never look back.”

And that's exactly what has happened.

I was able to leave that job because I am not in debt, I live simply, and I’m persuaded that my home business, Planet Whizbang, will now support my family. I’m persuaded of that because it has done so for the past two years. We have lived entirely off the Planet Whizbang income while saving every cent from the prison job. That’s how we had the cash to buy 16 acres of land with the house on it right next to us last year (another dream come true). 

My income will be slashed considerably now that I have left government employment. There will be no more steady paychecks. Perhaps the home business will earn additional money to offset the loss, but that is not a guarantee, and it isn’t important. 

I am 55 years old. It is not unusual for someone who is 55 to retire after having made and saved a lot of money working in a high-paying job. But that is not my situation at all. I will, without a doubt, work harder now and in the years to come. And I will never retire (unless my body or mind fail me). But I will now be doing creative, productive work without leaving my home and land. It will be a much more satisfying lifestyle, and it should be a healthier way of life. Yes, it’s a deliberate agrarian dream come true.

Many people have a similar agrarian dream, of enjoying the freedom that comes with living debt-free on a piece of good land, with a home business that pays the bills, without being a wage slave. I offer my example as proof that it can be done. It can be done without following many of the industrial world expectations and assumptions.

But, having said that, I need to make some things clear...

First: I’m not exactly a young man anymore. Though I have been self-employed in the past, I have submitted to being an employee for a lot of years before breaking free. 

Second: I have had an entrepreneurial mindset since I was in elementary school. I’ve had more money-making ideas in my lifetime than I can remember. I pursued several of them in years past, and all of them were pretty much failures.

Third: God took me through a time of extreme failure and monetary loss. I came to the realization that I had failed financially because I had strived for success with pride and arrogance in my heart, and I had made an idol of my dreams.  I don’t think that I was ever outwardly prideful, but God knows our hearts.

Only when I was humbled by failure did I surrender my hopes and dreams  to God. It was then that I truly trusted Him to provide, in His time, according to His sovereign plans, not mine. Only when I came to a point where I was content in Him, content in the sufficiency of His blessings, content even if none of the dreams I had ever came to fruition, and no longer striving as I once was, did the desires of my heart eventually become reality. My point is, there was a spiritual repentance and reformation in my life, and that was no small matter. Bible verses come to mind....

“Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established”Proverbs 16:3 

“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.”
Proverbs 3:5-6

Fourth: though I stopped striving for success, and had a different spiritual mindset, I never stopped working. There is a difference between striving and working.

Have you heard the saying that God gives the birds their food, but he doesn’t throw it in the nest for them? God is a worker and a creator. We are made in His image. We are made to work and create. It is a blessing to be able to work. Adam's curse was not that he had to work, but that work would be hard. I would rather work in my shop, or garden, or in the woods than take an ocean cruise, or sit on a beach, or play some game. Yes, of course, there needs to be balance in life; there are times and seasons for work and play. But I believe our modern culture emphasizes play, amusement, and leisure while downplaying the importance of productive, creative work.

As so many of you who have read my writings here over the years already know, I wrote and self-published a chicken plucker plan book back in 2002.  It’s an amateur but earnest book that delivers the information. I invested less than $1,000 (which was a very large amount of money to me back then) in getting the first copies of that book photocopied and comb-bound at a local quick-print shop. It was a small beginning, but it was the genesis of the home business I now have.

I never invested any other money beyond that initial $1,000. The business grew and prospered slowly for the first six or seven years. I plowed profits from book sales into publishing more how-to books, and then into making and selling various project parts. 

I don’t think the average person who has never built a small business can truly understand the incredible amount of work and focus that goes into such an endeavor. Only my wife, Marlene, really knows the hours I’ve put into Planet Whizbang. Keeping up with the time demands of the home business (while still working the prison job) has been an enormous task, especially the past few years, and I couldn’t have kept it together without Marlene’s help.

But there is an energy that comes when you are pursuing an entrepreneurial project—especially when you see it bearing fruit, and realize it may be the means by which God brings you out of slavery to a dreadful job.

Planet Whizbang is not a large company, and I never envision it being a large company, though some people have suggested to me that it could be much bigger and more profitable. Marlene and I now run it, with occasional help from our boys. I like it that way. Perhaps, in time, one or more of our children, or grandchildren, can come into the business. But to grow Planet Whizbang into something beyond what our family can operate ourselves, right here on our land, would be to adopt the industrial-world business model. 

I am mindful that the modern approach to building a business places an emphasis on growing the business ever bigger to to achieve more profits. Such a goal is typically achieved (or attempted and never achieved) at the expense of marriages and family relationships, not to mention poor health as a result of stress. I’m a big advocate of free-enterprise entrepreneurship, but not success as defined by modern, worldly standards. I’m convinced that a small, home-based, hands-on business is all that God desires for me to pursue. And I am ever so thankful to Him for it.

My Next Project

Whizbang garden tote holding a just-dug clamp of carrots (and a few potatoes)

I am now at work on my next book. I started it last winter but did not get far before the demands of springtime came. I hope to have the book finished by the end of March (at the latest). It will be titled, The Planet Whizbang Idea Book For Gardeners. Subtitle will be: An eclectic selection of inspiring project plans, tips, tricks, and how-to advice for people who grow their own food.

Among many other things, the book will tell how to make a Whizbang garden tote like shown above (UPDATE 4/14: inexpensive plans for the tote are now available at This Link). And it will explain exactly how I make simple garden clamps. I'll also have a short chapter about measuring Brix with a refractometer. Brix is a gauge of nutrient density. Those carrots in the tote above (harvested on January 30) had a Brix reading of 8%. That's half way between average (6%) and good (12%), but a long way from excellent (12%). 

The fact that my carrots, grown by organic methods, are only 8% Brix underscores the fact that organically-grown food is not necessarily nutritionally superior just because it's organic. And you can't judge a carrot's inward nutritional value by its outward appearance.

Another chapter in my book will discuss how I intend to increase the Brix content of my homegrown fruits & vegetables in this year's garden. And I will chronicle my progress in the blog I will be publishing for readers of the book.

Gun Laws

A Ruger Ranch Rifle

I feel sorry for myself, living in the absolute worst state in the United States for personal freedom. The imperial governor of New York labeled me an “extremist” this past month because I believe the 2nd Amendment rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution should not be infringed by him and his laws. He thinks that the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution was put there to guarantee the rights of hunters. There was a time in this country when such thinking would never be taken seriously, but that is no longer the case.

Prior to the governor and his people railroading their restrictive new laws into effect, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Syracuse, NY newspaper. They didn’t print it. This is what I said:

To The Editor:

When a law-abiding citizen is faced with the threat of lethal force from a person with a gun—and SECONDS count—the police will be MINUTES away.  And when they finally show up, they will be armed with high-capacity, semi-automatic guns.

It is high-capacity, semi-automatic guns that give the police a fighting chance. Likewise, the same weapons give law-abiding citizens a fighting chance.

If I have, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, a right to my life,  then it naturally follows that I have a right to defend my life. High-capacity, semi-automatic firearms are effective tools for defending life. That’s one of the reasons I own such guns.

When politicians pass laws restricting gun ownership, and the ability of law-abiding citizens to effectively defend themselves, the government abdicates its responsibility to protect individual rights, and it becomes an agent of tyranny.

I have nothing but contempt for any politician who is on board with any gun control law that makes it harder for law-abiding people to protect themselves. These politicians are either naive fools, lily-livered, or wicked connivers. They base their restrictive gun laws on some half-baked concept of compassion for children. If they truly cared about children (and other innocent victims of gun violence) they would acknowledge the fact that law-abiding gun owners use their firearms to protect and save far more lives than a few deranged murderers have taken with their so-called “assault” guns.

I would like to think that everyone in the world is good. Or, I would like to think that law enforcement is always going to be there in time to protect innocent people when they are threatened by bad people. I would like to think that our government will never become an oppressor of law-abiding citizens. I would like to think that this nation will never be invaded by a hostile enemy. But to believe that, I would have to totally ignore the realities of human nature, and the history of the world.

If Americans trade their 2nd Amendment birthright for the pottage of illusions offered by social engineers and media manipulators it will set the stage for a future tragedy of epic proportions.

Have you heard of the Hegelian Principle for bringing about social change?... Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. 

Translation: Manufacture an issue or problem that "must" be addressed. This is often done after some sort of "convenient" crisis has occurred. cultivate a discussion about the problem, involving fear, panic and emotion. Demand a solution. Provide a solution that advances the social change you wanted to make. Such solutions will almost always involve more laws, more government regulation, and less personal freedom.

Manipulating the masses of media-addled Americans is now an efficient science employed by the ruling aristocracy of corporate finance and government to advance their agenda and emasculate American freedoms. This current gun control grab is a textbook case of the Hegelian Principle in action.

If you want to know the truth about whether guns kill people or people kill people, just ask a few convicted murderers. They ought to know, right? I did that before leaving my prison job. Every murderer I asked told me that people kill people. And they knew that taking guns away from law-abiding gun owners will not solve the problem of people murdering other people.

I can assure you that all the murderers and potential murders are not in prison. They live among us. If some Americans want to ignore that reality and not own guns for self-defense purposes, that is their choice, and I don’t have a problem with it. I understand that most of those people just don’t like guns, and that’s fine too—people are entitled to their opinions. But when those people work to take away the longstanding, Constitutionally-guaranteed individual rights of fellow citizens, that’s just plain wrong.

Sheriff David Clark of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin understands that people have a right to protect themselves, and he is encouraging them to do so. Good man, that Sheriff Clark!

Have you seen This YouTube Video of the police in New Orleans going into the homes of law-abiding citizens and confiscating their firearms? They disarmed the law-abiding people while armed criminals were running free and terrorizing communities. There was no due process in the taking of the guns. In one instance police tackle and drive to the ground an old lady in her home who admits that she has an unloaded handgun. That video should make every freedom-loving person in America very angry. 

In the midst of discouragement, I am encouraged by the number of county sheriffs in America who are taking a principled stand agains the tyranny of irrational gun control. This List keeps growing. You can learn more about the power (and responsibility) of sheriffs to stop tyranny by watching This YouTube video of Sheriff Richard Mack. 

And if you live in New York state, read This Letter that I sent to 50 newspapers in New York (I think it was published in 8 papers). If you agree with it, print a copy and send it to your county sheriff with a note asking him to take the issue seriously.

The Freest Place 

To Live in America

A lot of New York residents are so upset with the new gun laws that they are seriously thinking of moving out of this state. I’ve been thinking more seriously of it myself. And I’ve been researching on the internet where a freedom-thinking person can go and still be free. 

I found my way to This 2011 Study. You can go to that link and click on the interactive map to read about freedom in any state and see the state's ranking. New York is the least free state. No surprise there. But the freest state in the USA is New Hampshire. How can New Hampshire be the freest state when it’s surrounded by unfree Northeastern states?

Upon further investigation, I found my way to 101 Reasons You Should Move to New Hampshire (if you love liberty). That list is a part of the Free State Project, which is a movement among freedom-loving Libertarians to bring more freedom-loving people to New Hampshire, so it remains a freedom-loving state. I’m intrigued. I like Libertarians. I may not agree with all their thinking, but their emphasis is on individual freedom and individual responsibility, and I can overlook a lot of other things when that's the primary objective.

I would like to live in a place where the 2nd Amendment (and all the rest of 'em) is understood, honored and protected. I would like to live where state government is limited, where homeschooling laws are limited, where building code laws are limited, where there are no appreciable oil and gas reserves (no hydrofracking), low property taxes, no CAFOs, low income taxes, a good supply of clean water, where there is affordable land, and the land is good for farming, and there are hardwood trees along with a change of seasons.

Unfortunately, New Hampshire doesn’t meet all those criteria. I spent some time looking for land or homes on land of 15 to 50 acres and New Hampshire looks like a very expensive state. 

Then I saw that Missouri is #5 on the list of freedom-loving states. I spent a lot of time researching Missouri, and settled on the south-central region of the state, around the  counties of Webster, Wright, and Douglas, east of Springfield. It’s the Ozarks. I was ready to take a trip down there until I found out that the governor of Missouri is a liberal and believes that so-called assault weapons should be outlawed. Huh?!

Austerity USA?

I don't have to tell you that America is in trouble. We're going down, and the rate of decline seems to be accelerating. Our debt is unpayable. Do you realize what happens to a nation when it can't pay its debts? 

According to Oliver DeMille, author of the book, Freedom Shift, nations that can't pay their debts have, since 1944, been bailed out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. He writes...

"In return for such benefits, the borrowing nation submits to "Austerity Measures," under which the IMF closely watches national policy and government institutions to ensure that the nation does nothing to jeopardize its ability to pay back its loans. This system has certainly had its successes. But Austerity also amounts to a virtual transfer of sovereignty from national government to IMF regulators—well beyond the citizenry to require accountability to effect remedies."

Think Greece. This scenario does not seem too far fetched. The snare is closing. Here's Oliver DeMille again...

"...an economic team of regulators will run our national economic policy and make our economic decisions. If Americans are frustrated with Congress, imagine their frustration with a group of international bank officials running our economy—bankers who may not have as their motive either to see us out of debt to them..."

DeMille makes the point that "economics and freedom are directly linked. A debtor nation is less free than a solvent one."

Freedom Shift

I purchased a copy of  the book, Freedom Shift, on the recommendation of a friend. It is a book that covers a lot of ground, introducing a lot of ideas about where America is headed, and why, and how to preserve freedom. Many of the solutions offered reflect agrarian principles. 

Chapter 5 of Freedom Shift is titled, “Hamilton vs Jefferson” and begins as follows:

“Thomas Jefferson envisioned a nation of small farm and shop owners that spread around leadership and prosperity, while Alexander Hamilton preferred a mercantile system with a few wealthy owners employing the large majority of the populace.” 

You can read Chapter 5 of the book at this pdf link titled: Overcoming Hamilton’s Curse.

I don’t have the time to go into more commentary on Freedom Shift, but I encourage you to check out Oliver DeMille’s Web Site and peruse some of the articles. Also, be sure to sign up for his newsletter and he will send you links to some podcasts.

Liberation 

Through Self Reliance

(photo link)

Oliver DeMille also has a website named Four Lost American Ideals. While perusing the articles offered there I came upon Time to Get Out The Spinning Wheel, written by Stephen Palmer. Please read that article. It reiterates much of what I've been saying in this blog for many years. Self-reliance and personal responsibility is the key to individual freedom and national restoration.

Alternative Soda Pop

Though I almost never drink soda pop, I would make an exception if a store like this was in my neighborhood. This is a great entrepreneurial story. 

(Note to Lisbon Falls Moxie Festival Coordinator, Julie-Ann... they sell Moxie.)

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That's it for another month. Thanks for stopping by.

The Deliberate Agrarian Blogazine December 2012

Dateline: 31 December 2012

A view of woods & stream on the new land we bought in 2012

Well there goes another year. It was a memorable year because my first grandchild was born, and the fulfillment of my long-held vision for land (without going into debt) became a reality. My Planet Whizbang home business has also grown and, in less than a month, I will finally leave my wage-slave job to work at the home business full time. That will be something pretty special for me.

I love this machine!

And 2012 was the year I bought myself a snowblower. I've never owned or even used a snowblower before, and I never thought I'd buy one, but my aging back  and a second driveway to clear (on the new property) has brought me to this point. 

I bought the snowblower in early November, back when the weather was nice and everyone was wondering if we might have another winter like last year, in which the snow barely made a showing.

But that question has been answered. It has snowed a LOT here and I actually enjoy "shoveling" with a 30" wide snowblower.

The only problem I faced was getting it from my home to the new place down the road where we have a doublewide trailer packed with Planet Whizbang inventory. But I solved the problem with that sled you see in the picture above. It doesn't look like much but it gets "Mr. Ahriens" down and back very nicely.

My People

Kate Towle, My Great Grandmother

I was looking through some old pictures this past month and came across the one above showing my great grandmother Kate Towle, of Fort Fairfield, Maine. The picture was taken in 1964 by my grandmother Kimball (Kate’s daughter). My grandmother wrote on the back: “This is rug Mother made for me.”

My grandmother Philbrick (on the other side of the family) was also from Fort Fairfield, and she crafted beautiful braided rugs too. The rugs were made from woolen material that was salvaged from old clothing. I recall my grandmother Philbrick braiding fabric that had been cut to an even width and sewn into long rolls.

I don’t think I have ever known anyone besides my grandmothers to make braided rugs. Marlene and I have often thought we would like to try it. Have any of you reading this made a braided rug?

The Hiram Towle, Sr. Family of Fort Fairfield, Maine (1932): Front row- Kathryn, Hiram, Jr., Kate, Hiram Sr., Clara, John. Middle row- Donald, Helen, Mary, Ruth, Everett. Back row- Arthur, Charles

The picture above (click to enlarge) shows Kate (32 years younger than in the previous picture) seated next to her husband, Hiram Towle.  Hiram and Kate were married in 1907 and they had 11 children. My grandmother (Mary) was the oldest of the bunch. Hiram was a potato farmer and their farm was on the Hoyt Road. Everyone in that picture is now deceased, except my great aunt Clara.

Looking into the young faces of my kinfolk, in a picture taken 80 years ago, is kind of odd. I remember many of those people. It leaves me with a poignant and melancholy feeling. Life is so very short.
.

The First Time 

The N.Y. Times 

Wrote About Me 

This picture from  the Grassroots Project in Vermont, 1976-77, was probably taken by Ruth Biro. I wrote on the back: "Gordon (from the Times), Dawn, Tilda, & Beth."

Back in the fall of 1976 I was enrolled in "The Grassroots Project" at the Sterling School (now Sterling College) in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. It was a life-changing year for me in many ways. One of the funny things that happened that year was a reporter from the NY Times came to the school for a week to gather information for an article. That wasn’t so funny, but what he wrote—about me—was kind of funny, primarily because it was completely untrue.

Here is what the article said:

Herrick C. Kimball, a recent product of Choate, is equally enthusiastic. He likes the way the faculty shifts quickly from theory into practice. “I learned more about botany in one day here,” he says, “than in a whole year at Choate.”

I am not a product of Choate, and I never said what I was quoted as saying in the article. But my classmate, Harry Miller, was a product of Choate and he said those words. The mixup apparently came because Harry’s real name was Andy. And the reporter was apparently given a list of the names of the students in the program. When he went looking for “Harry” in the names, he assumed that Harry was Herrick. But Harry was actually Andy (I’ve never been called Harry).

Harry (or Andy) was the one who told me about the article when it came out, and he was a little miffed that I got quoted in the NY Times instead of him. 

All of this was in my mind when I recently came across the old picture above. I wondered if I could find the original Times article. All I knew was the reporter’s first name. After about ten minutes of searching I found the web site of Gordon Sander, and there was the article: The Subject is the Land and the Sky and Yourself.

The internet is truly amazing!

P.S. How I came by that picture is kind of interesting. I had no camera back then. But a friend who did showed me the school’s darkroom one day. There was exposed film hanging all over the place. The film contained pictures that he and some other students had taken. My friend showed me how to use the film and the equipment in the room to develop my own pictures using photographic paper. I ended up buying a package of the paper and spent an afternoon developing pictures from the film. That was the first and last time I ever did that. 

Now we have digital cameras, darkrooms are pretty much a thing of the past, and I’ve become an old-timer.

A Man Called Peter
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I watched the 1955 movie, A Man Called Peter, a few days ago. It is about the life of the Presbyterian minister, Peter Marshall. It is based on the book of the same title written by Peter Marshall’s wife, Catherine. Somewhere packed away I have a copy of the book, signed by Catherine, that I picked up from a past bookhunting expedition. I think I’ll have to read it because I enjoyed the movie. It was something of a blockbuster back in ’55 (three years before I was born). I know my mother was a big admirer of Marshall, probably from seeing the movie. If you have an opportunity to see A Man Called Peter, I recommend it. One thing for sure—they don’t make movies like that anymore.
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Peter Marshall 

On Womanhood

Peter Marshall died of a heart attack in January of 1949 . He was only 46 years old. In November of 1949 Catherine published a book of her deceased husband’s sermons. Mr. Jones Meet The Master was an instant best seller. 

There is a chapter in the book titled “Keepers of the Springs” which I found particularly interesting. It is about Christianity, and womanhood, and the importance of godly mothers. Here are some excerpts from that chapter.

“[God] ushered woman into a new place in human relations. He accorded her a new dignity and crowned her with a new glory, so that wherever the Christian evangel has gone for nineteen centuries, the daughters of Mary have been respected, revered, remembered and loved, for men have recognized that womanhood is a sacred and noble thing, that women are finer clay.... are in touch with the angels of God and have the noblest function that life affords.”

“It remained for the twentieth century, in the name of progress, in the name of tolerance, in the name of broadmindedness, in the name of freedom, to pull her down from her throne and try to make her like a man. She wanted equality. For nineteen hundred years she had not been equal—she had been superior. But now, they said, she wanted equality, and in order to obtain it, she had to step down.”

“No nation has ever made any progress in a downward direction. No people ever became great by lowering their standards. No people ever became good by adopting a looser morality. It is not progress when the moral tone is lower than it was. It is not progress when purity is not as sweet. It is not progress when womanhood has lost its fragrance. Whatever else it is, it is not progress!”

“The modern challenge to motherhood is the eternal challenge—that of being godly women. The very phrase sounds strange in our ears. We never hear it now. We hear of every other kind of women—beautiful woman, smart women, sophisticated women, career woman, talented woman, divorced women, but so seldom do we hear of a godly woman—or a godly man, either, for that matter.”

“The world has enough women who know how to be smart, It needs women who are willing to be simple. The world has enough women who know how to be brilliant. It needs some who will be brave. The world has enough women who are popular. It needs more who are pure. We need women, and men too, who would rather be morally right than socially correct.”

Social Commentary

if you happened to miss my mid-month commentary about the Sandy Hook shootings, you can Read it Here. 

Another commentary on that sad event that I recommend is, Where Does The Blame Lie?. That essay, written by my friend Ron Woodburn, contains the congressional testimony of Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Joy Scott, who was killed in the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Mr. Scott does NOT lay the blame for his daughter’s death on guns or the NRA.

Even if you don’t take the time to read Ron’s essay, you should still click the link above to look at the picture he has posted with the essay. The unusual picture is a profound essay and commentary in itself.

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Standing Stone Honey

Ronald Woodburn, of Standing Stone Honey products, Locke, New York

Ron Woodburn (mentioned above) is a young man of exemplary Christian character. I’ve been blessed to know him, and his whole family. Ron has also been a beekeeper for several years. He works a full time job in the city and in his spare time he is building a home-based business around the honey that his bees make for him. In other words, he’s an agrarian entrepreneur. That’s something I have a lot of respect for, especially in younger folks (which, from my perspective, is anyone under thirty).

With all of that in mind, please take a moment and stop by Ron Woodburn’s web site, Standing Stone Honey Products. Check out what he has to offer. Ron's business and his products reflect his personal integrity. You can buy from him with complete confidence. ‘Nuff said.

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That's it for this month. 

Here's wishing you all a blessed year in 2013!

ReflectionsOn Sandy Hook

Dateline: 18 December 2012

I feel compelled to comment on the recent school shooting in Sandy Hook.....

Newtown, Connecticut, is a place that I’ve visited numerous times in years past, when I was writing articles and books for the Taunton Press. On a couple of my visits I stayed in the guest house tucked away behind Taunton’s main headquarters. There are trees around the house and railroad tracks run past. I’ll never forget, the first time I stayed there, one of the editors advised me to make sure that I locked the door at night. “I don’t want to scare you, but there is an insane asylum right next door, on the other side of the railroad tracks.” I thought he might be kidding me, but he wasn’t. 

One of the buildings at Fairfield Hills Psychiatric Hospital in Newtown, Connecticut.

Newtown is truly a pleasant (and prosperous) New England community, but from 1931 to 1995 it was also home to the ominous-looking Fairfield Hills State Psychiatric Hospital. 189 acres in size, Fairfield Hills housed as many as 4,000 patients in it’s day. One interesting feature of the place is that the numerous buildings are connected by a network of underground tunnels. 

One can only imagine how convenient the tunnels were after, say, giving a lobotomy or a shock therapy session (both of which were done at Fairfield Hills)—the patients could be whisked underground from building to building. Out of sight, out of mind. 

After the closing of Fairfield Hills, the property passed to the town of Newtown., and they have worked to dig up or seal the tunnels.

I have had some minimal exposure to state psychiatric hospitals as a state employee in my current job. In one instance, I went to a day of training at the former Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane. During a break in the training, I wandered through the cavernous and deserted building. It gave me the creeps.

In one room I came upon boxes of old file folders, some broken and scattered across the floor. I’m an inveterate reader, and had an hour to kill. The files were full of old “accident” and incident reports. They revealed horrors. The place was once a living hell.

Sign on a wall at Fairfield Hills

In another instance, I visited a state psychiatric hospital in Rochester. It was a more modern facility. Very high security. Some remodeling had been done. No patients were in the area where I was. I spoke with a woman who had worked there for years. She was nice enough, but she was hardened, and she was a survivor. She had stories of being attacked by patients. She said that you couldn’t trust them. You couldn't turn you back on them. She told me that, years ago, they had strapped the violent ones down, but these days drugs are used more to control violent behavior.

There was a section of the building where I could look through a window and see into a populated wing. It was for mentally disturbed youth. I looked through the window, and I felt very sorry for those kids. There, but for the grace of God, went I.

Another view of the Psych hospital at Fairfield Hills in Newtown

Nancy Lanza, the mother of the Sandy Hook school killer, was, by all accounts, a loving mother. The thought of putting her son in a psychiatric hospital would have been a source of tremendous anguish for her. And yet, she knew her son better than anyone else. Recent news reports indicate that she was in the process of having him committed.

Nancy Lanza’s son was, no doubt, on doctor-prescribed psychotropic drugs. And its likely that he was on such prescriptions for many years. These drugs are a common denominator with many of the horrific killings that have been committed in recent years, as this eye-opening YouTube clip explains.

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It’s a sad, sad story, this killing spree at the Sandy Hook school, and some people are struggling with the question: "How could God let something so horrible happen to those young and innocent children?”

I think that’s a legitimate question to ask, as long as it’s not asked in the manner of putting God on trial. The question is, however, not one that we will ever get an answer to, at least not in our present state of existence.

The bottom line is that God does as he pleases for His own purposes. He is the potter, we are the clay. He does not, and will not, justify his actions to mere men. It is not given us to know the answers to all questions about God and his purposes.

That being the case, I think that there are two very different responses that people take when something as wicked as this collides with their belief system. The two responses are nothing new. They are played out in the Book Of Job in the Old Testament. 

You may recall that Job was a greatly blessed man, and a good man (as men go). But all of that changed for awhile. God allowed Satan to torment Job in a way that few people have ever been tormented since. Job’s children were killed. His considerable wealth was taken. He became sick. All of this happened in a very short span of time. (you can read the story HERE).

We can only imagine Job’s distress. He probably wondered why all of the tragedies had happened to him. It’s only natural to wonder. And Job’s wife responded in a way that was also only natural. She advised him to “Curse God and die.”

But Job’s response to his troubles was much different. I dare say it was not natural. Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

Job’s response to personal tragedy was profound, simple, and theologically rock solid: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

This kind of response from Job, and this situation at Sandy Hook, brings to my mind a 3-minute YouTube clip I have linked to here before. It is by John Piper and it is about the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel is not pertinent to this discussion, but at 1:24 into the clip, Piper says something that grabs me every time I hear it. He talks about the worst kind of tragedy, and then he presents the proper Christian response. It's powerful. Watch it Here.

People who declare that they could never follow a God who allows children to die in such a brutal manner are like Job’s wife. They do not know God. If they did, they would trust Him.

To trust Him is to know Him. To know Him is to trust Him.

Besides that, those who judge God for allowing evil to happen fail to recognize (or take into account) His incredible love, His mercy, and His grace, all of which were manifested through the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The wickedness of this world pales in comparison to the goodness of God.

Faith and trust in Jesus Christ are the keys that begin to unlock the mysteries of God (not all of them, but enough of them). Faith and trust in God, through Jesus Christ, are what best equip a person to deal with all the difficulties of life, including even the unbridled terrors of hell that erupt from time to time through the actions of evil men.

That’s how I look at this event. 

But I’m not done yet.......

There is a horrible irony in this mass killing in Newtown. Some people will not appreciate me pointing it out. But it is so obvious to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to see it. 

Twenty beautiful young children shot dead in one day at a school is nothing compared to the 3,000 to 4,000 beautiful babies that are murdered by abortion doctors in this country every day of the week, fifty-two weeks a year. That reality is, frankly, more horrifying to me than Sandy Hook.

I’ll bet that there are plenty of people in this country who are appalled and disturbed by the Newtown shooting, but who declare that they are "pro-choice." These people don't much care about unborn children that are literally ripped from their mother’s womb’s. Many of these unborns are fully formed, fully alive, fully innocent. And yet it, in the minds of so many people, this killing of children is acceptable.

I don’t understand. 

And I also do not understand how Barak Obama,who, as senator, voted to legalize the most gruesome of abortion procedures (on full term babies) can shed tears in public for twenty children shot dead. Are there no tears for the millions killed by the abortionists?

I don't think it is exaggerating one bit to say that abortion doctors and  misguided politicians are responsible for the murder of far more children than were killed by one psychotic boy in Connecticut.