Welcome to another edition of The Mueller Report!
Intentional or not, this is becoming more of a bi-weekly newsletter. That’s partly due to work for AIER picking up in addition to the rest of life! Still, I think it’s worth continuing to comment on the news and share what I am thinking about and doing.
Updates
We are officially opening The Abbey back up for the ski season this weekend. A variety of people have stayed with us over the past few months even though we were “closed.” But that’s how it should be – we want our space to be used well even when it is not open to the public.
We’ve had a couple big storms over the past few months – so there is enough snow to ski – but we could use a lot more. Even having lived here for over a year, I am still learning how dicey getting to and from Denver for travel can be. I drove through a snowstorm going to the airport two weeks ago (and got stuck behind plows for 20 miles or so) and then drove through another blizzard coming back last Friday. They closed the interstate because of an accident and so I and hundreds of other people sat in the middle of a snowstorm from about 9:00 PM to 10 PM wondering what would happen next. It was so slick that even after traffic started moving again, I passed a semi-truck that was sliding backwards on the interstate!
We are still finalizing holiday plans, but they involve games, skiing, ice-skating, snow-shoeing, sledding, and friends from the east coast visiting for a week. We’re still mulling over whether to host an evening of swing dancing, dressing up to imitate still life paintings (a priority for Kathryn), and other activities. I’ll write about what we end up doing (hopefully with some pictures) later.
News
I’ve been following environmental news recently. The UN global climate summit (COP 28) just wrapped up this week. The big news is that the countries involved resolved to explicitly phase out “fossil fuels” – the first time the term fossil fuels has been used in these climate agreements. Historically, energy-hungry countries like the U. S., China, and India, and energy-producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the UAE resisted explicit calls for phasing out fossil fuels. But no longer.
One of the interesting elements of COP 28 is that it was chaired by Sultan Al Jaber – who is the CEO of one of the largest oil companies in the world (Abu Dhabi National Oil Company). There was understandably a lot of skepticism about having him chair the global summit on climate change, when nearly everyone involved believed that burning fossil fuels was the primary cause of said climate change.
Still, their gamble paid off. By enlisting a major oil producer and oil producing country, they were able to advance their goal of phasing out fossil fuels. It probably helped that Jaber also leads the big renewable energy company in the UAE too. Although Greta Thunberg is apparently not satisfied, the world is certainly drifting in the climate activist direction.
You can see what I think about climate alarmism and green energy subsidies in two recent Washington Examiner pieces:
Reflection
I went caroling with a group of fifteen Awana kids and a couple leaders earlier this week. It’s been a very long time since I last went caroling. But this time went well – the kids were eager to go and loved being out in the snow in the dark – and everyone received the caroling happily.
It made me sad in a cinematic (as opposed to literal) nostalgic way that this kind of activity used to be more common, both for people to participate in and to receive. It’s one of those small pieces of culture and community that slowly fades without replacement. Fades so slowly that we forget to miss it.
I’ve been thinking about serving in church and other areas of life recently. I’ve concluded that many people could get better at asking for help. And many could get better at saying “no” to requests. Those two things are related. I have found that many people are hesitant to ask for help or for favors because they don’t want to “impose” on others or “strain” relationships. Now, for those who are lazy and ask for favors all the time, such hesitation is good. But for people who work hard, yet find themselves stretched thin and struggling, hesitating to ask for help is a flaw. But part of why people feel this way, I think, is because they also don’t know how to say “no.” If someone were to ask them to do something, they might feel imposed upon themselves.
We ought to work on being willing to ask for help, being willing to say “no” graciously, and being willing to accept “no” graciously. If we don’t, some people will carry heavier burdens than they need to bear, which will often create unexpected problems over time. And we also won’t communicate and know how to help each other as well as we could because requests are not made known.
Writing
I’ll just point you to a few other things I have written over the last couple weeks:
A Short ESG Guide – Goals; AIER Column
California’s Environmental Road to Poverty; Daily Caller
A Short ESG Guide – Finance; AIER column
Game Corner
My kids have found ways to make basic games like tic-tac-toe and chess more interesting. These variations were not created by my kids, but they imported them into the Mueller household. Apparently, you can play tic-tac-toe within tic-tac-toe. Draw a basic tic-tac-toe board, then within each of the squares draw additional tic-tac-toe boards. When a player chooses a space to fill on the mini-boards, the next player then writes on the corresponding mini-board in the larger tic-tac-toe board.
So, if you mark the top right box of a mini tic-tac-toe board, the next player will pick a space from the mini tic-tac-toe board in the top right quadrant of the larger tic-tac-toe board. Hopefully this picture will make it clearer.
All you need to do is begin playing it to see that a lot more calculation is involved. Teddy, who is the great “complexifier,” added another layer (a lot like Inception) which I have not played yet.
But he assures me that it will be quite straightforward to play. We’ll see…
Regarding chess, I have been playing a version called “Hand and Brain” with the kids. You play in teams of two. One person is the “brain” and chooses what kind of piece to move and the other is the “hand” that then decides where to move that kind of piece. It makes things interesting, especially when your teammate is 6 years old…
Have a great weekend!