The business of moving is a royal pain, and incredibly time consuming. I have spent the last two weeks running here, there, everywhere. Getting driver’s licenses, the farmer’s market (we’ve found local providers for meat and eggs, yay!), a bank, finding the library (which is better than Macomb, but not as good as Jonesboro), figuring out where everything is. The kids are sick of the heat and the car. Thankfully, the place we rented is in a neighborhood that has a pool (there are two houses for sale in this neighborhood, and the pool is a big incentive to stay) and we’ve visited every day this week. Without that, we’d all be grumpier than we are. I’ve realized that over the five years we’ve lived in smaller towns, I’d become accustomed to that pace of life. Sometimes I’ve felt overwhelmed; swamped by the sheer size of things around here. Then there’s just having four kids around all day at the end of the summer. It’s time for school to start (and thankfully, it does, next week) — they’re at each other’s throats for the littlest things.

Perhaps all this influenced my opinion of Look Homeward America, by Bill Kauffman. I found it grumpy, sarcastic, and downright mean. I don’t mind sarcasam, and at times Kauffman was funny, but too often I thought he dissolved into arrogance and meanness. His basic philosophy is the same as Crunchy Cons, but where Dreher was doing his best to convince readers that his ideas were worth something, Kauffman holds contempt for those who don’t agree with him. Or, at least that’s the way it read to me. He may have been trying to convince people to be “front porch anarchists and reactionary radicals” but fell way short of the mark.

There was one chapter that I liked: the anti-war, Wendell Berry one. But then, it’s probably because I like Wendell Berry and am a pacifist already. So, it really wasn’t a stretch for me to appreciate his point here. But the rest of the time…

Then again, I could be giving this book the fuzzy end of the lollipop — it has been a stressful couple of weeks.

I wouldn’t recommend going on vacation for three weeks and then turning around and moving 10 days (well, 8 and counting) later. It’s not exactly stress-free. Though it does reduce the OCD-induced depression I get from being surrounded by boxes. That was not fun last year.

I had a pile of books to read on vacation, and only got to three. Something about talking to friends and talking to relatives and being lazy and it being hot.

The other downside of reading on vacation and then not posting, is that I can’t remember all the insightful and pithy things I was going to say about this book by Rod Dreher. Sigh.

In a nutshell: It’s a book written for members of the Republican party (which annoyed me at time; I am not nor will ever be a member of the Republican party), but mostly to convince them of some very reasonable ideas. I should define the terms, first. Crunchy: i.e., granoly, flaky, left, hippy, etc. Cons: conservatives, primarily social. The ideas are presented in a series of interviews and stories (though my husband insists it doesn’t hold together theoretically, but that’s not my forte). Some are great: buying local, mostly organically grown food, for example. Or choosing to live closer in the city in older homes rather than bigger, newer McMansions. The education chapter made me feel guilty (homeschooling is best), but then I feel guilty easily about my kids schooling (and I get it frequently, as most of hubby’s family homeschools). There was a chapter about religion (it’s good) and something else, which I don’t remember right now.

It’s not a great book, but I think it’s an important one, especially if it can get die-hard, big-business, money-grubbing, free-capitalist conservatives to think twice about their lifestyles. The question is, will any of them actually read it?

You have to like a book that has a title like that. Or at least smile. And you know, the book by Bob Tarte is just as good.

It’s essentially the memoir of a pathetic but endearing man and his complete incapability to say no to his pet-loving wife, Linda, whom he can not say no to. In reference to Linda’s ability to gain animals:

“We’ve been down this road before. Linda was driving a steamroller and nothing more substantial than a plywood cutout of a husband stood in her way. I might have succeeded in kidding myself that I had gained vast knowledge of animals over the years, but clearly I didn’t have a clue how to say no to my wife, particularly when the question involved a new pet that part of me secretly wanted, too — and that part was the knot inside my pine head.”

From the first pages, this book had me laughing: it begins a list of all the pets they’ve owned complete with short descriptions. Like “Stanley Sue, gender-switching African grey Timneh” and “Howard: amorous ring-neck dove” and “Turkeys — Hazel: victim of sneak attack/Lizzie: presumed perpetrator of sneak attack.” I could go on. And the pace and the humor keep up through the whole book. Bob’s reluctance and then acceptance of pets in rapid succession — from rabbits to parrots and parakeets then ducks, geese and turkeys — is amusing and, well, endearing (I’m lacking a thesaurus right now).

It’s great even if you’re not a pet-lover (I’m not especially; my idea of a good pet is fish). But, I think if you do love animals, you’ll enjoy this one even more. In fact, I’ve considered getting it for my brother-in-law, not because he loves animals (though I think he does), but because I can see my sister being like Bob’s wife Linda. Maybe it’s a warning for what might be coming in the future.

As for me, I thankfully can sit back and enjoy the life of pet enslavement from a distance. That is, until my husband and girls wear me down and talk me into getting that cow they’ve always wanted…