Visiting Verdun

 Longtime readers know that World War One is a topic on which I've extended considerable time and energy, though also one in which I have allowed projects to lay fallow for far too long.

I don't want to leave The Great War permanently unfinished.  Like so many other areas of life, at a certain point my efforts were swamped by other things, but it remains a major life goal of mine to finish it.

All of which is to say that when I realized that I had a good chance of being able to piggyback on a business trip to spend a day visiting the battlefield at Verdun, I leapt at the chance.  

Books

I've read a lot about WW1 books, but Verdun is a massive and challenging topic.  I wanted to make sure that I both refreshed my memory on the events and also had a good guide to the battlefield itself.  I read three books to prepare myself:

Walking Verdun: A Guide to the Battlefield is a combined tour guide and military history.  It's broken down into ten walks, each visiting parts of the battlefield.  Each chapter first recounts the events that took place in that particular area, then provides a map of the walk showing the sites you'll see on it, and a step-by-step narration of how the walk proceeds and the significance of what you'll be seeing.

The Price of Glory by Alistair Horne is a history of the battle originally published in 1962, which puts it well within living memory of the battle.  Horne talks about how veterans from both sides contacted him to confirm or expand on accounts that Horne provided in the first edition.  While there are more modern histories to read of the battle, this one is the best foundational one to read because it follows the battle linearly from beginning to end.  I'd read it before 10+ years ago, but listened to it this time on audiobook, finishing the last half hour while walking some of the trails around the battlefield.

Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War by Paul Jankowski is a much more recent work of scholarship, published in 2014.  It provides a lot of good analysis of different aspects of the battle and how it has been discussed since, but because it's broken up by theme rather than chronologically, it's better as a second book to read about the battle than a first.  I had a physical copy of it (as well as Walking Verdun) with me me on the trip, and am finishing off the last pages of it this Memorial Day weekend.

Getting There

After wrapping up my week of business work, I took one of those cheap flights which are so plentiful in Europe over to Charles de Gaul airport and picked up a rental car.  I'd worried a bit about driving in France, which I've only done once before, but Verdun is in a rural area in the northeast corner of the country, and CDG is on the northeast side of Paris, so you actually do not have to navigate any complicated Parisian driving to get from CDG to Verdun.  I was glad my little European car was a hybrid, because gas in France (or "sans plomb" as unleaded gas is called) is over 2.00 Euro per liter or about $8/gal.

I stayed at a little hotel in the cobbled street heart of old Verdun.  The car was useful not only for getting to Verdun from CDG (a 2.5 hour drive) but also so I could drive to different points around the battlefield before parking and walking around.  The Poilus may have walked on foot up the Voi Sacre through Verdun and up to the front lines, but if you're wanting to see the battlefield in 1-2 days, you need to supplement with some wheeled transportation.  (If you were to visit with a bicycle, there are some great bike trails around the various sites, and it would be a great way to see things.)

Comprehending a Battlefield

Some years ago, we made a family trip to visit the Gettysburg battlefield.  Even that three day battle was large enough geographically that it it was a little challenging to follow the full sweep, but individual parts of it like Little Round Top and Picket's Charge were very clearly comprehensible because you could stand at a key place and look across the whole sweep of it.

Verdun is challenging because it was so large in both place and time.  The battlefield is (depending on your definition) about fifteen miles wide and about 10 miles deep.  And the battle (again depending on where you draw lines) ran for at least ten months.

The Germans originally attacked just on the east side of the Meuse river on Feb 21, 1916, but then as the battle continued on different sectors would fall semi-quiet as either side made new attacks or counter-attacks, both on East and West sides of the river.

The battlefield as a whole remains something which is best contemplated with a map rather than in person, though there is a great 3D topographical map and video combination at the battlefield museum. However, as you visit the individual sites you can usually see why each individual area because a point of conflict.  The importance of ground and visibility is very obvious.  In a battle in which artillery was the predominant force (40-60 million artillery shells were fired during the course of the battle, and books recount something on the order of 80% of battlefield casualties being caused by shells) having the high points both for observation and for siting your guns was essential.

What you do get a strong sense for in walking the battlefield is first how the only protection from the constant shelling was getting into the ground: trenches, buried forts and shelters, even shell holes.  For a soldier on the battlefield the only means of survival was getting down into the only thing big and solid enough to absorb the punishment of constant shelling: the ground.  You can still see the remains of trenches and shelters and forts, and the bizarre rolling topography of shelled ground is very striking in person.  I took multiple pictures trying to capture it, but although some get it some some extent, I really think you can't get the full sense without being there in person.  This is ground which has taken a huge amount of punishment from shelling.  It looks like a storm whipped sea which suddenly froze in mid-frothing motion.

Shell-churned ground in the destroyed village of Fleury

Shelled ground on the wooded hill called Morte Homme

Douaumont destroyed village

The other thing you realize very clearly is how important high ground is.  The reason why the hill called Morte Homme (a name going back to before the war, and based on the hill's shape) was fought over so long and so hard by both sides was that it provided good artillery observation and gun emplacement positions for shelling the center of the battlefield.

Heavily overgrown because it was declared a "red zone" and left to be claimed by forest after the war, you can still see a bit from there the vista from Morte Homme which made it so desirable for artillery

The view north (toward what were German lines before Feb 21, 1916) from the top of Fort Douaumont

The view from near Fort Souville

Walking the Trenches

There remain trench lines in various stages of repair. One of the better preserved ones was called London Trench (Tranchée de Londres) which was built by the French late in 1916 to serve as a supply and wounded evacuation route back from the re-captured Fort Douaumont.  They built it using vertical posts made of concrete reinforced with steel rebar and also cement slabs between the posts.  Many of the posts are still there and some of the slabs still stand.  In one place, they've built a reconstruction with wood siding such as was there in 1916.

Scattered through the landscape are concrete shelters which provided soldiers with a place to escape the threat of shells for a short time -- though sometimes not enough shelter from the larger shells, as some of these are badly wrecked.

Infantry shelter TD3 south of Douaumont near London Trench

Infantry Shelter DV1 south of Fort Douaumont

The destroyed Command Post 118 shelter near Thiaumont

There are also artillery battery sites with storage emplacements dug into the hillside where the shells could be kept out of danger of being set off by incoming counter-battery fire.

Battery emplacements near Fort Souville

And there are fortified machine gun emplacements, like this one outside Fort Souville which looks like the most threatening elephant head ever.

The Forts Underground

If trenches dug into the earth were one level of safety, the next level were forts that were buried under 6-10 foot thick slabs of cement and then earth piled on top of the cement and stone.

Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux were the two major forts of Verdun, but the latter is currently closed for reconstruction and so I wasn't able to see it.

Fort Douoaumont was captured early in the battle (Feb 25, 1916) by the Germans (it had been left almost unmanned by the French, who at that point were working on the theory that forts were an outdated relic of the 19th century).  However, it soon became clear that buried forts were incredibly useful in a war of artillery.  While the Germans held Fort Douaumont, thousands of German soldiers sheltered there.  And once the French re-took the fort on Oct 24, 1916, it once again became a French strongpoint.

The fort had been built of stone and brick, then had a massive reinforced concrete slab poured on top of it for protection and then been buried.

From the south (French) side of the fort, you can see the construction of stone with concrete poured on top

Sitting on top, the buried fort looks like a shell-pocked hill

Rotating gun turrets that moved up and down provided firepower that could be retracted to safety inside

This mechanism raised and lowered the gun turrets

Underneath were multiple levels of underground passages and galleries

A massive explosion and fire underground while the Germans were occupying the fort killed 679 German soldiers who are buried in this sealed off tunnel.

The Dead Surround Us

Lasting some ten months, Verdun consumed about 300,000 dead (roughly half French and half German.)

In the constantly shelled battlefield, evacuating dead for burial was almost impossible, and so many soldiers (if they were buried at all) received informal burials on the battlefield, which were often churned up again by additional shellfire and excavations.

As a result, the battlefield was a source of many thousands of "unknown soldiers" as the battlefield yielded up the remains of unidentified men who had died fighting in the shell swept hellscape.

The bishop of Verdun led the building of an ossuary, as the resting place of the bones of men known only to God.

The ossuary is divided into niches for each region of the geography of the battlefield, but within each section the bones of French and German soldiers are mixed, as often only their humanity and not their nationality could be known.

The Ossuary

The National Cemetery next to the Ossuary.  There is an Islamic section where men recruited from Islamic regions of Africa into French colonial units lie, their headstones facing towards Mecca.

Among the many moving sights in the Ossuary was a side alcove in the chapel where damaged items from the churches in destroyed villages were collects: twisted candlesticks, a battered monstrance, several alter crosses slowing signs of battering and melting.  The churches in the nine villages that "died for France", villages wiped off the map by shelling and within the "red zone" which was not rebuilt but turned over to forrest after the war, had not been fully evacuated before the battle, and these were the remains rescued from those churches.  (Photos were not permitted within the ossuary, so I do not have any from there.)

I spent twelve hours and 30,000 steps covering the battlefield, but I could easily have spent another day or two.  It was fascinating to see a place that I'd read so much about, and the visit gave me insights I hope to use when writing.

One thing that's harder to get a sense of is what the region looked like before the war. Most of the area was farmland of one sort or another.  It was after the war, when the area was so devastated by rubble and ordinance and the remains of the dead that the government declared much of the battlefield to be a "red zone" and forbad people to resettle or resume agriculture.

The forestry service planted tens of thousands of trees across the battlefield in the 1920, and trees have gradually claimed much of the battlefield.  But underneath the trees, you can still see the churning scars of shellfire.  And to this day, I read, both human remains and relics of the battle continue to be found amid the churned up shell holes of the battlefield.

The Market for Journalism

The Washington Post recently announced that they are laying off a significant portion of their staff, including whole departments such as the Sports section and the Books section.

I have nothing but sympathy for those personally affected by this.  Being laid off is an intensely unpleasant and unsettling experience which I would not wish on anyone which not only leaves you worried about your financial future but also about your professional effectiveness and self worth.

One thing that's been surprising to me in the discourse around this announcement is that a number of the people who have been talking about the shrinking of the Washington Post as a threat to the free press and the First Amendment are in the same circles (and in some cases the same people) who were loudly advocating that everyone cancel their subscriptions to the paper back in 2024 when they announced that they would not be making an official endorsement of a presidential candidate in the election.

Since the Post is privately held (by Amazon founder Jeff  Bezos) it doesn't formally publish financials, but as Nate Silver wrote in a recent post by looking at how often users link to WaPo articles one can get a pretty good idea of how much it is being read.  That data would suggest that the WaPo is now doing almost as badly as it was prior to Bezos buying the paper.

This means that the "boycott the Washington Post" people have largely been successful in hurting the paper.  Why some of those people are now unhappy with the success of their work I'm less sure.  

Another thing the graph shows is that how much people read and link to newspapers has become subject to a partisan cycle.

When Trump was first elected, both the NY Times and WaPo saw significant surges in attention and  subscribers.  This was, after all, the original "Democracy Dies In Darkness" era of the Washington Post, when it was getting attention by being even more steadfast in its opposition to Trump than the NY Times. 

There was some loyalty carry-over after the first Trump presidency, but as you can see from the graph the trend was downwards.  And as the Biden presidency slumped towards its ignominious conclusion, the references to both papers declined precipitously.  Arguably, this is because their readership had become strongly linked to a particular partisan alignment, and people with that partisan alignment were not enjoying the news much in 2023 and 2024.

With the second Trump presidency, the NY Times is once again getting huge amounts of attention, but there has been no benefit to the Washington Post.  Arguably this is because the WaPo offended its partisan readership by not officially endorsing a candidate in 2024.  This resulted in about 10% of the paper's digital subscribers cancelling, a reduction of about 250,000 subscribers.

What do companies do when they see a significant decline in revenue?  Often they cut costs, and for a newspaper, a lot of those costs are people.  It's probably not surprising that the successful push to literally decimate (reduce by 10%) the WaPo subscription base ended up resulting in layoffs.

Perhaps the surprising thing is that there's a fair amount of overlap between the people who encouraged people to cancel subscriptions to the WaPo back in 2024 and the people who are upset to see it laying off employees now.  I even saw a few posts in which people tried to blame the layoffs on the Trump administration attacking journalism as an industry and institution.

The actual narrative here, I think, is first that in an environment where many newspapers were losing subscribers in the 2000s, the WaPo successfully made itself a national brand (arguably at the expense of local papers which continued to die) by making itself a nationally known source of opposition to Trump and the Right more generally.

However, taking on this brand meant that when the WaPo did something which offended the customer niche it had tied itself to (partisan supporters of the Left) it found its readership significantly reduced and was losing money rapidly.  (Reportedly, the paper had a roughly $100M loss in 2024.)  A lot of people are blaming Jeff Bezos for not subsidizing the paper despite its losses, and it's true that keeping the paper going would cost Bezos less than producing another excruciatingly bad season of Rings of Power, but while it's true that a determined billionaire could keep pounding money down the budget whole, it is in the nature of money losing organizations to cut expenses.

Maybe a better question is: why was the fury against a paper not explicitly endorsing a candidate which it was clear to everyone the vast majority of its staff supported sufficient reason for angry subscribers deal such painful financial blows to a paper which in retrospect many people broadly on the left seem to consider a valuable thing to have in existence?

Darwiniana 2026

I feel like Mr. Hat here all the time.

Last night my 8yo son read me Green Eggs and Ham, all the way through, without stopping.

Not a milestone at your house, perhaps: your child did this at age 4, probably. Some of my other children did this at age 4. But this child, my seventh and my youngest, has dyslexia, and we have been working through a reading program designed for dyslexic brains. This is my second time through this program, and we started earlier with this child than we did with his older sister. I'd taught four children to read without more than the usual fuss, and couldn't understand why #5 was having such difficulty doing the things that worked before. With #7, I recognized the same signs earlier (and fortunately, hadn't resold my expensive dyslexia curriculum).

My mantra, in regards to teaching this one to read, is, "If it was easy, he'd be doing it already." It's tempting to compare progress with other children -- someone else's 8yo has beautiful neat even handwriting; his cousin is reading novels; other homeschoolers his age can read directions well enough to compete in a math tournament. I believe strongly in reading, and I want all my children to have a firm foundation of literacy. This guy needs some extra help and support, and this is a reason I continue to homeschool: I want to provide that support in a way that builds lifelong mastery and confidence, not just quick testable results which are forgotten as soon as they're documented. 

What that means in practice is a lot of me reading aloud books or instructions that other children his age could read themselves, and lots of what would be considered tutoring, I guess: one-on-one work at the table in various subjects instead of me sitting him down with a book or worksheet or paper for independent work. Is this the best way to do things? I don't know, but it's what seems to work for us.

I read recently an article about stages of brain development, which cited research about major developmental changes at ages 9, 33, 66, and 82 or 83. I'm trying to lay the foundation for some solid age-nine growth in my 8.5yo. Laying the foundation seems like the bulk of our parenting right now. My dad used to say, "I'm raising you kids to be adults," and that's something I think about a lot. Several of my children are legal adults, and others are fast approaching that age. I pray that their foundation is solid enough that they can continue to build on it themselves, and in turn, support new relationships and provide stability for future generations.

I don't write much these days partly because I feel like I've forgotten how to write, but also because as the kids take up working on their own foundations, their stories become their own, and I owe them the privacy of being able to do that work without Mom putting it out there for the world to discuss. Our last year was chaotic to an unprecedented extent for our family -- not bad, mind you, not evil, but challenging for everyone. The beginning of 2026 looks very different from the beginning of 2025, and our plans are different than we thought they would be. We're not prepping for a wedding, for one thing. Two daughters ended relationships; one has started a new one. Educational plans have changed for a few people. People are moving out, and moving back in. The younger ones live through these changes in a way that the older ones didn't have to (since it's the older ones making the big life shifts), and that leads to stresses and adjustments that didn't have to be made when all the kids were young. I don't know exactly how this works, but everyone feels like they're the middle child, falling through the cracks while everyone around causes drama. I literally, at this very moment, have a cat in the walls of my house. 

This is my wall, but this isn't even my cat.

Life feels all-consuming -- good, but all-consuming. My prayer life seems to consist mostly of the name of Jesus with each breath.

But we don't stop having small milestones because we have big milestones. And reading Green Eggs and Ham is definitely a cause for celebration. My 8yo wanted a blue camo hat, and as a reward for reading his book, we went to Amazon and picked out one he liked, because his developments are no less momentous than his older siblings'. What's one more hat, or one more cat, in a house and a life that's already so full? The foundation, I think, can take it.

Human vs Machine Problem Solving

At some point the Darwin clan got into playing the daily Wordle word game, which is now owned by the New York Times.  I am significantly less accomplished at word games than MrsDarwin or my elder daughters, but even so it's a fun daily ritual.

However, once I've solved the puzzle, the daily dose of frustration is reading the World Bot's analysis of how good my approach to solving the puzzle is.

To provide the small bit of necessary context if you do not play Wordle: you have six chances to guess a five letter word.  When you enter a guess, you receive feedback on each letter: green means you have the right letter in the right place, yellow that the letter does appear in the word but not at that place, and grey that the letter does not appear in the word at all.

As you guess, you eliminate possibilities and get clues:  The word does not contain an N and it does contain an A but not in the place you guessed it. etc.

From a human point of view, I do what seems like the most systematic thing: I try to establish which vowels are in the word first, and I also try to start with the most common consonants.  As I find out which letters are in the word, and where they are (or are not) in the five slots available, I'm able to narrow down my guesses.

Once I know things like "the word contains an A in the second place out of five, and it contains an S but at in the first slot" I can shape my guesses and zero in on the word.

In theory, the Wordle Bot, which I can use after completing the puzzle to analyze how well I solved it, provides feedback on the process.  But in fact, it mostly underlines how differently humans and computers solve problems.

Wordle Bot analyzes the problem based on how many words you have eliminated with each guess.

So based on your second turn, it might look at a situation in which you've established that A, N, I, M, P, T, and S are not in the word, O is in the second place, and E is in the word, but not in the middle or the last place, and tell you that you've eliminated all but 58 possible words.

Now, to defend Wordle Bot, this is a decent metric for measuring how your puzzle solving is going.  S is a much more commonly used letter than Z, so establishing that S is not in the word tells you much more about the word than establishing that Z is not in it.  The number of possible words remaining statistic will reflect that.

But for a human, that "how many words are left" metric is just that, a metric.  You're not thinking, "If I guess STONE, I will eliminate more words than if I guess "DROSS", though you may be thinking, "If I can eliminate S, T, N, and E, I will know more than if I just eliminate D, R, and S"

The machine problem solving approach of Wordle Bot is a brute force analysis approach: It has calculated the total number of five letter words in its dictionary, and with each possible guess it calculates the number of words still possible.

There may be some human somewhere who can calculated the number of five letter words that don't include A, N, I, M, P, T, and S, have O in the second place and have E but not in the middle or last place, but that person is so quantitative as to seem borderline insane to the rest of us clothed primates.

The human approach to solving this kind of puzzle is more intuitive.  We know some quantitative things, such as that S, T and R are very common consonants and that vowels give a clear shape to a word as well as being very common.  But with that information we are solving the problem more intuitively.  We're taking possibilities off the table, and then at some point we have the "aha" moment where knowing something like "The word is _OVEL and that first letter isn't N" makes the answer jump out to us.

Some of the neural network style machine models which are behind modern LLMs, image recognition, and other forms of "artificial intelligence" are based on machine versions of this more intuitive approach.  But as of now even these are fairly alien to the nested layers of learned intuition which power huma thinking.  Imagine recognition programs have become very good, but some of the odd mistakes we still run into at times are because machine models are in some sense brute forcing all types of question at once: Is this image a cat?  Is it a stop sign?  Is it a bicycle?  Is it the letter J?

I suppose you could say that wide open question is addressed by humans so quickly that we're unconscious of it.  But another way would be to say that we start much further down the decision tree, and yet with less ability to count the possibilities.

If you show a picture of an animal to a child and ask, "Is this a cat?" the child (at least over a certain age) doesn't start out by eliminating the possibility that the picture is actually a fire hydrant.  Nor does the child have an encyclopedic knowledge of how many animals or things the image could be of and start eliminating them "does not have upright posture and huge back feet, thus it's not a kangaroo"?  Instead, the child leaps pretty quickly to an idea of what a cat looks like, compares a few features, and reaches a judgement.

Machine problem solving tends to be focused on the things that machines are really good at: working through lists of things very rapidly and performing logical tests.

Human problem solving tends to be focused on what we as creatures have become very good at: pattern recognition and intuition.

Even as we make more progress in building "thinking machines" I would imagine that there will always be this difference in flavor to the two approaches.

It's Not a War

After Charlie Kirk was assassinated, there was loose talk in some sectors of the right about how "they are out to get us" or "we are at war".

Like a lot of right wing discourse lately, this was to a great extent a conscious inversion of rhetoric which some parts of the left have been using for a long time.  From calling themselves "the resistance" to calling their opponents "fascists" to the people who rather despicably were going around within hours of Charlie Kirk's murder comparing him to Horst Wessel -- some on the left have been very eager to describe our current politics as being basically like World War II, with their political opponents cast as the Nazis.

I do understand the "they want us dead" reaction to reading what the least temperate fringe of the left has to say.  Even though it is one of my principles not to be abrasive about my political beliefs, when I read people in my circle of acquaintance taking to social media to declare that the world would be better off without certain groups of people to which I arguably belong (say, "middle aged white guys who support gun rights" or "Christians who don't accept trans rights"), I do have the emotional reaction that they are wishing the world to be rid of me.

But no matter how much people on both sides may find this rhetorical war footing to express their feelings, I'm here to be annoyingly literal and say we really don't want to think about politics like we think about war.

Not just because it creates a rhetoric which, if taken seriously, would lead to more political violence, though that in itself is worth considering.

If "they" are really out to kill us, it makes sense to fight back against "them".  And if "they" really are Nazis or fascists, then it makes sense to fight them with more than memes that label the soldiers who stormed the beaches on D-Day as "the original antifa".

The fact is that we ended the political power of Nazism by killing hundreds of thousands of soldiers and also hundreds of thousands of additional civilian 'collateral damage'.  If you go around describing one side of the American electorate as Nazis and fascists, at some level you're saying that such mass violence is the only way to deal with your political opponents.  And if you're not a psychopath, you don't mean that, so you should stop.  And the "we're at war now" people should stop too.

But there's more than that.

Here's the thing about wars.  Not only are they mass violence at a horrific scale, but in war you are in a truly zero-sum struggle.  One can only win via the other size losing.  And because of that, in war each side makes true devil's bargains in order to find allies who will help defeat their enemy.

So not only was WW2, the "good war" to which our culture so reflexively refers, a war in which we killed many innocent people along the way to victory (as one invariably does in war.) But it was also a war in which we allied with and actively supported Stalin and the Soviet Union-- a dictatorship every bit as evil and murderous as the Nazis we were seeking to defeat.

And while the Soviets could probably not have defeated the Nazis without our help, it is also the case that they did more of the dying and killing that defeated the Nazis than we did.  The front on which Soviets killed Nazis -- and both killed untold millions of civilians caught in between them -- was the decisive front in WW2.  The Normandy landings were the "second front" which Stalin had been demanding for years.

The relevance of which is: because war is a matter of life and death survival, it tends to collapse alliances into a simple two-sided system.  This means that even the "good guys" may in fact be allied with absolutely terrible people because anyone willing to fight the enemy for any reason is an ally.

There's no better example of this than how Finland (aggressively invaded by Stalinist Russia) found itself allied with Nazi Germany in a basically just war -- something that the US recognized even while allying with Stalinist Russia for completely other reasons.

This is different from politics.

In a healthy politics, alliances are shifting and constantly realigning based on getting specific things done.

Not so very long ago, an bill limiting abortion might have had had both pro-life Republicans and pro-life Democrats voting for it.  And the same for many other issues.  Many politicians belonged to one broad coalition but also crossed the aisle to support certain issue which might generally be identified with the other side.  

This is healthy in politics because it is a politics in which alliances on specific issues are key -- you can work with people on the "other side" on one particular issue, even if they might not work with you on other issues.  This is a healthier politics than a war-style politics in which destroying the other side is the only goal, even if some people on the "other side" might agree with you on various issues.

It is much better to maintain the cross-hatched, issue driven, dynamics of politics rather than engaging in the "grand coalition for total defeat of the other" dynamic which characterizes war.  We do not want to slip into the other mode, and we are dangerously close.

It's not just that it is a mode of politics which is bent on destruction, it's also that it causes us to make unconditional alliances with people we violently disagree with because it is the only way to achieve the destruction of the enemy.

This is the element of WW2 which is hard to process through the typical "good war" lens.  In World War II we allied with an incredibly evil regime because it was a way of achieving our goal of defeating those fighting us.  This is the sort of thing which happens in war because war is only ended when the enemy is defeated, and so any alliance which results in the defeat of the enemy is successful.

In normal politics, on the other hand, the alliances are issue focused.  Any alliance which results in achieving the political goal is successful -- but those alliances might be different from issue to issue.

Not only are the alliances we make in war focused on destruction, but they may well be alliances which strengthen those who totally oppose our beliefs.

This is what I do not think we should allow to dominate our politics.  In politics, we should focus on allying with those who will help us achieve policy goals -- not focus on allying with those who also want to destroy the same people we want to destroy.  Indeed, we should not have it as a political goal so destroy the other side.  They are our fellow citizens and we will end up having to live with them.  We don't get to defeat and occupy them and then go home.

This war footing may be suited to war, but it results in perverse alliances when it comes to peaceful politics.  And it is why we should prefer to pursue politics rather than war -- to focus on positive accomplishment rather than destruction.

The Blog Is Dead, Long Live The Blog

Back in June I completely missed the 20th anniversary of this little plot of internet.  I knew that it was happening, but we were in the middle of so much real life (a musical that MrsDarwin was putting on, various family events and tribulations) that I completely failed to post about it.

It's one of those odd aspects of modern life that any member of the public who happens to be interested can look back and see what 26-year-old me had to say -- someone who had not yet settled on the field (pricing) which has become my career for the last eighteen years, someone who had then only two children rather than the seven we have now.

And then, over the course of several thousand posts over 20 years, you can see all the things which I chose to write publicly from that day to this.  Blogging has a clear living in public aspect to it.

At the time, I think I had half an idea of the blog eventually leading to some sort of larger career as a writer.  Lots of people did make that transition over the intervening years.  But although I've had a novel published and become a contributor of data journalism to PillarCatholic.com, overall I think one must say that I've not been successful as a blogger, in the sense that my work has not consistently led to larger audiences and wider opportunities for publication.

And in recent years, we've come to write a lot less.  Some of this is because other areas of life have become increasingly busy.  When we started writing, we had a couple of toddlers, and while children that age require supervision and diaper changes, you don't have to spend much time helping them plan for college, make their budgets, or apply for car loans.  And we ourselves were personally involved in far less back then: community theater, boy scouts, choir, community chorus, youth groups, finance council, liturgy committee, various classes and clubs.  I hardly know what all we do these days.

When you're a parent in your mid-twenties, you have a lot of spare time for an activity you can do while not leaving the house.  In your mid-forties -- less so.

But in many ways I'm glad that we did not end up becoming successful bloggers. In an online world dominated by algorithms, in which anger often drives engagement (whether it's stirring it up against others or bringing it down on oneself) there are very strong incentives drawing people to the low road. There are people who have written for many years whom I continue to admire, but it's a narrow road.  If you're trying to make a living, there's all the more incentive to do what the masses want.

So while I would like to try to write more than I have in recent months and years, I am honestly grateful for how unsuccessful this blog is.  There's something freeing about knowing that so few people care what we say, and that we make no money from it.  It means there's less guilt when we go silent for protracted periods.  And it means I don't need to provide the needed take or worry about whether it will drive the needed traffic.

Indeed, one of the reasons I write so much less now than I did in the past is not just lack of time, but that over the years I've built up more and more ties with various people who might be hurt by various topics or think that I was writing pointedly about them.  And even the "this is what it's like raising a family" kind of writing become a very different matter when you're dealing with teens and adults who have a legitimate desire not to have their affairs talked about.

I have a lot I think about in regards to what it's like to try to raise and support adult children as they take their early steps into the world, but whereas I don't think there's a particular privacy to "here's what we're reading to the three year old" or "this is how bedtime is going" I very much think that people have a legitimate expectation not to have their educational or relationship or career struggles written about without their consent.

Still, there's a glorious freedom in writing for a mostly unread blog.  As we move on through our third decade, I will endeavor to do so more often

How Firm A Foundation

This weekend our theater group is putting on a staged reading of a new Princess Bride/Shakespeare mashup, so it is an excellent time to assess our rapidly disappearing summer in the light of Inigo Montoya's formula: "Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

Anyone who needs a refresher on our chaotic summer production of Singin' in the Rain may consult the first post of the Novena for Order. This episode, while dramatic enough, has not been the only source of chaos and reorientation in the past months. Immediately after the show, our engaged daughter called off not only the wedding, but the relationship, something that was perhaps a long time in coming for those with eyes to see, but certainly a shock to the family social structure. The readjustment process is now drawing to a close, and everyone is beginning to find stability in the new normal, but the Novena for Order prayer certainly hit harder this year.

Brendan and I are very proud of our daughter for doing a hard and necessary thing, and we will always support ending an engagement rather than pushing forward into a problematic marriage. We know many people who perhaps should have broken off their relationships in the engagement period, and I myself am the product of a relationship that should have ended before marriage, and know from the inside what that looks like. I know from the perspective of a child what it looks like when parents do not build a stable foundation for marriage, and what it looks like when a child is forced to take on for themselves the foundational work that parents should be doing, work that is not proper to the child. 

The first best time to examine and strengthen this foundation for marriage and parenthood (because marriage is by its nature the foundational structure for parenthood, although not all marriages produce children) is, it should go without saying, before marriage. The best preparation for being a good spouse and parent is to become a strong, stable person, with the hard and necessary work that entails. Examine your strengths and weaknesses! Get therapy! Get right with God! The second best time to strengthen this foundation is when your children are young and you start to see how your own past and problems affect them. And the third best time is now. Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation! 

If this is controversial to anyone, it's because this is hard work, sometimes painful and sometimes immediately destabilizing as the old wineskins sometimes have to be picked apart one weak stitch at a time. The truth will set you free, but the cost is dying to yourself. I think this is why parents tell themselves that their children are resilient and will overcome the deficiencies of their early years, and why they're surprised and heartbroken when their older children cut them out of parts of their lives. 

To that end, I think marriage prep (and perhaps engagement prep) should balance focus on the theology of marriage, as important as that is, with the very practical questions posed by the annulment questionnaire, which most couples only deal with when their they're confronting a permanently failed relationship. Why should you wait to examine the pain points and stresses and tensions between two people until after the damage has been done, to the couple and to their children? 

So here, taken from the Tribunal of the Diocese of New Orleans, are the sort of questions people should be asking, of themselves and of the other, as they progress toward the commitment of marriage.

***

MARRIAGE ANNULMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

I. YOUR LIFE BEFORE MARRIAGE

A. Family Background

1. Describe the life of your parents together and the way they got along.

2. Describe the way in which you got along with each of your parents.

3. Describe your relationship with your siblings while growing-up, and the birth order of each one.

4. Describe how your relationship with family members and the marriage of your parents might have impacted your views on marriage.

5. Had you experienced any problems in adjustment or emotional difficulties in adolescence or young adulthood? If so, how did these issues affect your judgment in deciding to marry or readiness to undertake on the obligations of married life?

B. Personality and Character

1. Describe your behavior toward alcohol and drugs; specifically any addictive or abusive behavior.

2. Describe your relationship with the opposite sex, dating habits, and/or any addictive behavior(s); e.g., gambling, internet, cybersex, pornography.

3. Write a brief sketch of your personality; comment on your weak and strong points at the time of the wedding and now.

II. YOUR FORMER SPOUSE’S LIFE BEFORE MARRIAGE

To the best of your knowledge, answer the following questions regarding your former spouse.

A. Family Background

1. Describe the life of his/her parents together and the way they got along.

2. Describe the way in which he/she got along with each of his/her parents.

3. Describe his/her relationship with siblings.

4. Describe how his/her relationship with family members and the marriage of his/her parents might have impacted his/her views on marriage.

5. Had he/she experienced any problems in adjustment or emotional difficulties in adolescence or young adulthood? If so, how did these issues affect his/her judgment in deciding to marry or readiness to undertake on the obligations of married life?

B. Personality and Character

1. Describe his/her behavior toward alcohol and drugs; specifically any addictive or abusive behavior.

2. Describe his/her relationship with the opposite sex, dating habits, and/or any addictive behavior(s); e.g., gambling, internet, cybersex, pornography.

3. Write a brief sketch of his/her personality; comment on his/her weak and strong points at the time of the wedding and now.

 III. MARRIAGE PRIOR TO THIS MARRIAGE

If either party had prior marriages, then list the marriage(s) in chronological order and provide the following information:

1. Name and religion of spouse

2. Place of marriage (church, hall, etc.)

3. Officiant (name and title)

4. City and state of marriage

5. If deceased, date of death

6. Divorce Decree: Where issued? Number? Who petitioned?

7. Canonical status of each prior marriage i.e., Decree for Lack of Canonical Form and/or Declaration of Nullity

8. Provide the Case name and Protocol Number and the (Arch)diocese.

IV. COURTSHIP AND ENGAGEMENT

1. Give a brief narrative of your first meeting with your former spouse, your frequency of dating, where you went together and what you enjoyed doing on dates.

2. Describe your dating experiences and your relationship during courtship. Were there any disagreements or arguments? Did problems arise?

3. How long did you date each other before you got engaged?

4. Describe how the decision to marry was reached. How long was the engagement?

5. Describe what discussion you had about married life, its rights and duties.

6. Describe what discussion you had about the lifelong nature of your commitment. Did either of you see divorce as a “way out”? Please explain.

7. Indicate what discussions you had about faithfulness in marriage.

8. Describe your attitudes and intentions about having children. Did you agree to not have children? If so, why? If you agreed to wait to have children, was this essential to your agreement to marry? Why? Did you tell anyone of this before the wedding? Who?

9. Indicate the church preparations you had for this marriage.

10. Describe the attitudes of both families toward the wedding and who made the wedding preparations. Were they any objections? Who made them and why?

11. Tell what your friends said of your decision to marry.

12. If your relationship with each other was a sexually active one prior to marriage, when did this begin? How did this influence your decision to marry?

13. Did you feel pressured to marry? If so, who or what was pressuring you and how? Please explain.

14. Were there other factors that had a major influence on you/your former at the time? Please explain.

15. Did either of you hide anything about yourselves from each other to make sure the wedding would take place? If so, what was hidden? Did it become a problem during the marriage? Please explain.

16. Did either of you set any conditions for the marriage to take place? If so, what was the condition and who set it? Did the continuation of the union depend on this? Who knows about this?

V. THE WEDDING

1. Give a description of what you were thinking and feeling as you were preparing for the wedding, going through the ceremony, and attending the reception.

2. Describe anything unusual that might have happened at the wedding or the reception.

3. State your understanding of marriage at this time.

4. Did either of you have any serious doubts about going through with the wedding? If so, why? Did either tell anyone about your doubts?

5. Had either been drinking or using any kind of drugs prior to the wedding? Where? How much? If so, what was the effect?

If you and your ex-spouse were first married civilly and later blessed or validated your marriage in the Catholic Church, please answer questions 6-8:

6. What did you understand the purpose of the Catholic wedding ceremony to be? Did you intend to give a new consent to marriage in this ceremony?

7. What prompted you to get married in the Catholic Church when you did? Did you feel compelled to do so? Why? By whom? If so, please explain.

8. Why did the initial wedding not take place in the Catholic Church?

VI. THE HONEYMOON

1. Describe where you went for the honeymoon and the length of time you stayed there.

2. Indicate any problems or any significant events that occurred on the honeymoon that would later have an impact during the marriage.

3. Give attention to the development of the sexual dimension of the relationship with reference to any problems or difficulties encountered.

VII. MARRIED LIFE

1. Describe the beginning of your married life. Were there signs of future problems?

2. Were there any changes of character or behavior? Please explain.

3. If you had children, when were they born? Did they affect the marriage?

4. If you had no children, what artificial contraceptive measures were used? By whom? On whose insistence?

5. If there were no children, what reasons was stated for the exclusion of children?

6. Explain the contribution and the responsibility of each to the common life in terms of:

a. finances

b. child care

c. household tasks

d. support: emotional, psychological, spiritual.

7. When did you first begin to feel that there were serious problems between you? What were they? Did you talk about them? Who knew of these problems? Was counseling sought? If so, when, where, and from whom.

VIII. THE SEPARATION

1. Were there separations prior to the final separations? Why? When and for how long? What brought you back together?

2. Give the reason for the final separation; give the date; and how it came about.

3. What was the reaction of others at the news of the separation and divorce?

Please explain.

4. Have you anything else to add?

IX. THE PRESENT SITUATION

1. What is the present marital status of each party?

2. Is there a marriage(s) subsequent to this marriage for which you are requesting a declaration of nullity? If yes, explain.

3. If you plan to marry, is the person free to marry in the Catholic Church?

Novena for Order 2025, Day 9

 

Lucy, 2006-2025

We are in the last hours for the ancient cat, who has been in decline for a while. Last week at her appointment, the vet said that there was nothing we could do to improve her quality of life, and we scheduled to have her euthanized today. This was expected, and even welcome, as we let the previous ancient cat linger for too long. And the young cat is revoltingly healthy, and massive enough to be two animals, so we will be afflicted with feline companionship for 18 more years if our policy of benign neglect bears its usual fruit. Still, it's the end of an era, and it is yet One More Thing in a very Thing-filled period. 

It's the last day of the Novena for Order. Is my life more ordered? Am I personally more ordered? I don't know the answers to either question, and I live in fascinated apprehension of what new order God will impose on me today, and this week, and this month, and for the rest of the year.

***

For Ordering a Life Wisely

St. Thomas Aquinas

O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.

Put my life in good order, O my God

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.

Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.

Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.

May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.

May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.

May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.

May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything else
besides You.

May all work, O Lord
delight me when done for Your sake.
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.

Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

O Lord my God, let me
fear You without losing hope,
be truthful without guile,
do good works without presumption,
rebuke my neighbor without haughtiness,
and -- without hypocrisy --
strengthen him by word and example.

Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart,
which no capricious thought
can lure away from You.

Give to me,
a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.

Give to me
a resolute heart,
which no evil intention can divert.

Give to me
a stalwart heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.

Give to me
a temperate heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.

Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
discourse ever pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.

Grant
that with Your hardships
I may be burdened in reparation here,
that Your benefits
I may use in gratitude upon the way,
that in Your joys
I may delight by glorifying You
in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You Who live and reign,
God, world without end.

Amen.

translation by Robert Anderson and Johann Moser
from The Aquinas Prayer Book