Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Updates
I’m happy to report that I earned my “Dad” badge this past week. I had all five kids on my own from Sunday morning to Thursday night while Kathryn was out of town. It went surprisingly well. The younger kids can entertain themselves for long stretches and the older ones can also entertain them at a pinch. It wasn’t my most productive week, but I still got several important priorities accomplished even while being “on-call” the whole time.
Kathryn traveled to Michigan to attend a seminar at our alma mater on the “American Musical.” Kathryn wrote her senior thesis on American musicals – so the topic is near and dear to her heart. Plus, she was entitled to a break after managing the kids while I traveled the previous three days when The Abbey was completely sold-out Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights!
The skiing over the past few days has been glorious – full of snow and flurries yesterday and bright warm sunshine today (and some sunburns to go with it!) Friends of ours had family in town and were out skiing all day yesterday and today. The younger kids would ski for a bit and then hang out with friends in the lodge while the older kids skied with buddies most of the day.
Lucy was able to ski three runs from the top of the mountain today without any assistance – a major milestone! JD meanwhile is quickly trying to ski every run on the mountain, blue or black (I told him he can’t ski double blacks until at least next year).
Necessity may be the mother of invention, but it is also the mother of getting things done. We have a big group that has rented the main floor of The Abbey, so we have moved to the basement – which leads to all kinds of constraints. While the group is friendly and we can come and go on the main floor, we’re trying to contain most of our (seven person) family living to about 1200 – 1400 square feet.
We had talked about putting a utility sink in our laundry room to make washing dishes more doable. While pieces of the project have happened over months – yesterday brought the final push of me hooking up the water to the sink near bedtime. The sink is 98% successfully installed. The only hang-up is that the hot water connection drips slowly; so for the interim we just turn it off unless we are actively washing dishes.
News
The presidential race has continued as I and many other people expected. Trump and Biden are on track to have a rematch this fall. Several people have talked about the idea of a “No Labels” unity candidate or the impact of RFK running as a third party. I don’t know how much influence those initiatives will have. I suppose it could be significant if the race between Biden and Trump ends up being close. We’ll have to see where they focus their time and money and who their main constituencies turn out to be (right or left?) One of the unfortunate consequences of our time, as seen in the State of the Union address earlier this week, is that Biden is becoming more and more like Trump in his rhetoric.
Some of you have probably noticed that bitcoin’s dollar value has taken off over the past several months. This is due primarily to the creation of ETFs where ordinary people (i. e. people who don’t know the difference between a hot wallet and cold storage) can invest in bitcoin through their ordinary brokers. This has opened the floodgates for increased demand for bitcoin, with no meaningful increase in total available supply. In my view, the price can only go up from here in the long run.
That being said, I sold some of my bitcoin earlier this week because it had risen so much in value and the future is uncertain; and because I had a particular use that I wanted to put the money towards. Here are some comments I sent a friend in response to whether I thought it was a good time to buy:
My reasoning with bitcoin, from the beginning, was that it was a highly speculative asset which I was fairly bullish on. I am still bullish on it.
But I also only want it to be 1-2 or at most 3 percent of my net worth. So I sold some to bring the dollar value of my holdings back down to a little below 2%. But if bitcoin's price dropped again such that my holdings were worth less than 1% of my wealth, I would buy some again.
I'd encourage you to consider something similar - maybe half a percent. I am bullish on its long-term value, but it is highly volatile and highly speculative, so timing the ideal purchase moment is impossible. If I were adding to my holdings, I would think about what dollar exposure I wanted to have in total, and then break that amount into 3-5 purchases spread out every month or so.”
Reminder: this is not investment advice – I am simply sharing how I think about investing in bitcoin.
Reflection
This week I’ve been reflecting on Psalm 1. There are many methods or strategies for meditating on a text. I’ll discuss three here. The benefit of staying in a text for multiple days, and meditating on it in different ways, is that before long you have part or all of it memorized!
Strategy 1 – Pick a verse and read it over and over while emphasizing a different word in the verse.
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water”
Strategy 2 – Try to summarize the passage in a single pithy or catchy phrase. Here are three attempts I made to do this for Psalm 1:
The righteous avoid wicked patterns, meditate on and love God’s Word, and flourish.
Flourishing is from the Lord and His law
Wickedness passes but righteousness endures
I’m curious which phrase you think best.
Strategy 3 – Summarize the passage in your own words:
People flourish when they avoid the patterns and allure of unrighteousness. Besides refraining from obvious sin, it means being careful not to fall into “Christian” versions of sinful patterns. The prime example is politics.
How often do we fall into patterns of scoffing at the wicked or the foolish? How much do our political habits mirror those we disagree with? Simply taking the opposite or “right” side of an issue doesn’t mean we are following the Psalmist’s exhortation to avoid the “counsel” of the wicked, the “way” of the sinner, or the “seat” of scoffers.
But we are not told simply “do not taste, do not handle, do not touch,” either. Patterns of unrighteousness seem tempting or alluring. After all, what are we missing out on with our dusty constrained views of monogamy, with the labor and inconvenience of child-rearing, with devoting so much of our time, energy, and money to the things of God – reading Scripture, praying, tithing, attending services, etc.?
Most of the media in our culture want to suggest that we are missing a lot by keeping to the straight and narrow. But the promises of Psalm 1 are quite different. “Blessed” are we, or “flourishing” are we, when we delight in God’s law and meditate on it diligently. We are healthy, like a tree with plenty of water, bearing fruit and not withering. This is not the time to go into detail but let me assure you that social science on depression, suicide, drug abuse, physical health, and reported happiness all confirm this.
God will judge the wicked and the righteous. The wicked will perish, along with their ways and their works. But the Lord knows our ways, the way of the righteous, and will establish every good work in eternity.
Writing
I had a review of a book about American economic stagnation called Ours Was The Shining Future come out in Law and Liberty this week. The book was written by a New York Times editor David Leonhardt. It picks up on several popular ideas on the right and the left today – namely that “neo-liberalism,” Reaganism, or free trade and limited government philosophy led to economic stagnation. He praises labor unions (which is also oddly in vogue among some prominent Republican officials) and heavy government spending in education and research and development. As you can guess, I had a few bones to pick with his narrative.
I’m not ready to share much of this yet, but I wanted to let you know that I am working on an essay on Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings. The working title is: “Status, Inequality, and Glory in The Lord of the Rings.” As I was reading and listening to the LOTR again over the past year, I was struck by how Tolkien takes dramatic inequality among his characters for granted. But this inequality is not arbitrary, far from it. It is a kind of meritocracy that revolves around power, greatness of spirit, and virtue.
Some of the most important themes of the book explore how some who are great become corrupted and fall, while others who are small in stature rise to greatness through their quest in devotion to others. Yet greatness varies by the kind of person and the capabilities one has. Gandalf is great in a way the hobbits are not and cannot be. Yet Gandalf could not take Sauron’s ring into Mordor – in fact, he refused to handle it even for a time and to keep it safe – while Frodo bore through danger and peril for months on end.
Tolkien’s writing is truly epic because he conveys glory in a way that few writers (especially modern writers) do. This is where he outshines his friend, the great C. S. Lewis. And glory is an interesting amalgamation, not only of power, but of goodness and restraint. There is a reason the heroes have glory, and their enemies don’t – even when those enemies wield great power.
That should give you a basic sense of what I am thinking about. I will be drawing heavily from several parts of the book to illustrate the idea of “veiling” and “unveiling” that I think is a key part of Tolkien’s style – and passages that are beautiful and weighty. I hope my fellow Tolkien aficionados will enjoy it and that those who are not aficionados will find reason to return to Tolkien’s work.
Game Corner
The game corner this week is just a quick highlight. This morning my oldest three used most of our currently limited table space to set up and play a game called Plunder. I’ve only played it once (though that will likely change soon). Game play is relatively simple and younger children can play and enjoy it. The basic premise is that each player is a different pirate band. There are various island strongholds that you can conquer and that give you resources each turn. Over time you try to gain victory points – the first player to ten wins.
Everyone starts with a single ship. But you can build additional ships if you have the right resources. You can also outfit your ship so that it can move further (by adding sails) or give it greater firepower (by adding canons). You can engage other players’ ships or attack their strongholds.
There is a storm that moves around the board during the game and isolates everything within it. And there are treasure chests you can open. Often these give you significant benefits, but sometimes they contain a curse or trap. It’s the kind of game that 6–12-year-olds can get pretty excited about!
Have a wonderful Lord’s day!
I am looking forward to reading “Status, Inequality, and Glory in The Lord of the Rings.”
Cheers!