Journal Notes from the Summer of '93

In early 1993, I pitched a book idea to Thomas Nelson Publishing and a movie concept to a producer on the set of Iron Will, and within a month both offered me opportunities to move forward.

While working full-time, I created a tight eight-month plan with two critical deadlines: August 1 for the book and October 1 the screenplay. But then my wife Susie threw me a curveball. She'd had enough of living in town and wanted us to go house-hunting so we could move to the country that year. To do all three felt like more than I could handle. I countered with this: she could go house hunting with a friend and after August 1 I would go see what they found. 

Sure enough, she brought me to look at a house on August 2, and by the end of the week we were owners of 8+ acres, a house and two garages--his and hers. By October we moved in and the screenplay was completed as well. 

Here are a few select entries from my journal that summer.

Seeds / Journal Notes

Proverbs 17:3

The crucible is for silver,

the furnace for gold.

The Lord tries hearts.

 

D.H. writes of our tendency as grapes to complain about the instruments God chooses when crushing us to produce holy wine.

June 23, 1993

 

Monday Ralph had a dream that I brought him two Bibles. Afterwards he said, “Who gave me this dream?”  I suggested that when he reads the Bibles, he’ll find out.

June 30, 1993

 

We remember our dreams to our own peril.    
June 30, 1993

 

At root I am depressed by the thought that I am not going to “make it” as a writer. That is, that I do not have the drive, the “neurotic passion” that is sufficient to make it.  That is, I allow other things to distract me, diffuse my energy, divert me from my course. I am not writing every day, every night.  And even though I am far more productive than my peers, it seems that I create illusions that give the impression that I am much more than I am. Do I have what it takes? Or am I just a small peeper making big noises that carry with the wind?

July 2, 1993

 

Our lives are written in time like words upon a scroll, with none of it to be erased.

July 3, 1993

 

I have labored these many years to produce a body of work. Today it seems so small… with so many stories yet to tell.  
July 5, 1993

  

There were four of us, brothers… till the four winds scattered us ‘cross the wild unwatered plains while the seeds of future dreams are nourished by private wells.

July 17, 1997

Is the Population Bombing? Why Immigrants Will Empty the Boomers’ Bedpans

For decades I’ve thought about how some day, when Baby Boomers are in their twilight years, the borders would have to be opened in order to have enough people to empty our bedpans when we’re in nursing homes. I just couldn’t imagine there’d be sufficient staff to take care of the needs of this generation as their turn on the circle of life came to a close.

As it turns out, there has already been a large influx of immigrants staffing nursing homes today. Meanwhile there is another variable at play, a historic decline in our global population.

This weekend I was listening to a discussion with Nick Eberstadt about this topic and although I was aware that some European countries were seeing population declines, I had no idea how global it was.

For the first time since the Black Death (bubonic plague) in the 14th century, the world's population is poised to decline — not because of war, famine, pestilence, or disaster, but due to sustained below-replacement fertility.

 

Since the 1300s, global population has grown roughly 20-fold through steady (if uneven) growth, as birth rates consistently exceeded death rates. Today, however, global health and longevity continue to improve overall, but fertility rates are now falling below the ~2.1 births per woman needed for long-term population stability. Eberstadt suggests the world may already have crossed into net below-replacement territory.

 

When I went to college, the “big thing” was quite contrary. Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 The Population Bomb warned of explosive growth and mass starvation. Because of the Vietnam War, colleges were overcrowded because being a student was one way to get a draft deferment. How this impacted me personally was that some of the required 101-level classes were filled, so they created a catchall class called Zero Population Growth. I wrote the required papers, but never bought into the Ehrlich narrative. In hindsight the class was a classic example of academics telling us what to think instead of how to think.

 

It was a theory presented as fact. What was missing was that science, technology and free markets could solve the food issue and other issues as they arose, because that is the nature of Capitalism. See a problem, use your brain and imagination, and profit from solving the problem. 

 

The new reality is the opposite: fertility collapse, not overpopulation. This is a voluntary, peacetime phenomenon driven by cultural, economic, and social changes in childbearing patterns — described as “entirely new” in human history. Here are some stats that show how pervasive the issue is.

 

East Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan)

By 2022, populations in all these countries were already declining. Regional fertility is about 50% below replacement — approaching or below 1.0 birth per woman in places like South Korea, Taiwan, and large parts of China. What this means is that each new generation of newborns is roughly half the size of the parental generation.

 

In China specifically, the one-child policy (1979) was relaxed in 2016 so you could have two childre, but births dropped by about half afterward anyways. Eberstadt sees this as a “massive vote of no confidence” in the regime — people aren’t having more children despite policy changes and incentives.

 

India

Overall fertility has fallen to sub-replacement levels. In Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), fertility dropped to around 1.0 birth per woman by 2021 — lower than in major German or Italian cities. This transformation occurred in roughly one lifetime, from roughly 5 births per woman in the mid-1970s to current low levels.

 

Europe (including Russia)

The decline has been occurring for half a century. In Russia there are 17 million more deaths than births since the fall of the Soviet Union. In the European Union (27 countries), births fell from 6.8 million in 1964 to just under 3.7 million in 2023.

There are fewer births in France today than in 1806 (during the Napoleonic era). As a result, much of Europe is now a “net mortality zone” (more deaths than births), with the gap widening.

 

Latin America, Caribbean, North Africa, and Middle East

There’s been a broad decline in birth rates across all these regions. Iran and Turkey, too. 

.

Broader Implications 

The decline is widespread and rapid on a historical timescale. East Asia and Europe are already experiencing absolute population shrinkage.The interview cuts off just as it appears to note that only limited parts of the world (likely sub-Saharan Africa) remain above replacement — setting up the follow-up segment I haven’t listened to yet.

Eberstadt frames this as a profound, under-appreciated turning point in human history: the end of centuries of growth and the start of an “Age of Depopulation,” driven by choices around family size rather than external catastrophes. The tone is measured but urgent, emphasizing how counterintuitive this is for those raised on overpopulation narratives.

 

Ironically, in the midst of Europe’s population decline amongst native Westerners, Ayaan Hirsi Ali draws attention to the growth of Islamic immigrant culture by means of both immigration and reproduction. Did you know that over the past two years the #1 boys name in England and Wales has been Muhammad? That's a whole 'nother story.

What are your thoughts on the world's population decline?

Feel free to leave a comment below.

Father and I: Par Lagerkvist Adds Layers of Meaning to a Simple Sunday Stroll

"Father and I" is a story I've run across in at least a couple anthologies over the years. It's always a rewarding read, so I will share this as a companion piece to Par Lagerkvist's Barabbas, which I wrote about yesterday.

"Father and I" may be one of Lagerkvist's finest short works. It's masterfully simple. On the surface, almost nothing happens. A nine- or ten-year-old boy spends a Sunday afternoon walking through the countryside with his father, a railway worker. They listen to birds, smell the spring air, throw stones into a stream, and walk along the railroad tracks where the father greets passing engineers by name. The world is harmonious, ordered, and familiar.

When darkness falls. everything changes. As they head home the same woods become threatening. The stream that had murmured pleasantly now roars like an abyss. The telegraph poles no longer "sing" but seem to rumble ominously from deep within the earth. The boy's excitement over a glowworm goes unnoticed by his father, creating the first hint of emotional separation.

At the story's culmination  an unexpected black train rushes past in the darkness. The father, who has recognized every train and every engineer throughout the day, stops and says in surprise: "Strange, what train was that? And I didn't recognize the driver." Then they walked on in silence, though the boy's body was shaking and his mind now supercharged with anxious thoughts about the future.

The story elements are freighted with meaning. The father represents certainty, tradition, continuity, and a world in which everything has a place. He knows every track, every timetable, every engineer. He possesses an unquestioned faith that gives coherence to reality. But suddenly there is a train that belongs to another order entirely—a train hurtling through darkness toward a destination the father cannot imagine.

The boy realizes that this unknown train is, in a sense, his own future. He will one day be leaving the secure world of childhood and entering a modern existence filled with uncertainty, alienation, and questions his father cannot answer.

What strikes me most is how this story anticipates Barabbas. In both works Lagerkvist writes about human beings suspended between worlds. The father inhabits a world of inherited faith; the son enters a world of existential doubt. Sahak possesses certainty; Barabbas longs for it but cannot attain it. Both protagonists are haunted by something absent—a security, a faith, a meaning that seems just beyond reach.

Lagerkvist's gift is that he never argues these ideas philosophically. He lets a walk through the woods, the sound of telegraph poles, or a black train disappearing into the night carry the entire weight of the human condition. The boy's fear isn't simply fear of the dark. One day he will board his own train for destinations unknown.

* * *

Reading the story always brings to mind a number of my own personal experiences with trains. It also brings to mind a story by Mike Savage about a father and son,  and a train, The Lost Locomotive of the Battle-Axe.  A youth joins his father for his first deer hunt in the brutal sub-zero snow of the northern woods. Bundled in wool and facing biting cold, the boy trudges through deep powder as they track big bucks. Amid the stark beauty and hardship, he helps field-dress a kill, confronting blood, guts, and the raw realities of manhood. The “lost locomotive” metaphor captures the father’s powerful, steam-like presence and the boy’s emerging sense of maturity. It’s a concise, visceral coming-of-age tale about initiation, father-son bonding, and the chill of growing up.

I also think there is an autobiographical element that makes the story especially poignant. It feels like Lagerkvist looking back across decades to the precise moment he sensed that he was departing from the unquestioned Christianity of his childhood into the uncertainty that would characterize both his life and his writing. The father is loved and admired, but he cannot accompany the son on the journey ahead.

Both stories revolve around fathers, sons, trains and mysteries. 

Read Par Lagerkvist's story here: Father and I

Haunted by Grace: Reflections on Pär Lagerkvist's Barabbas

From quite early in my life I've been drawn to European authors, though at that time I didn't know why. Later I realized that living through the World Wars and other horrors of the past centuries has produced a depth of consciousness which to some extent many Americans have only skimmed the surface. Over there, millions died and millions more lived in want while dreading potential outcomes, displacement and personal upheavals. 

One of the books I read in a fiction class in college was called Continental Short Stories. If you're a fledgling short story writer, I highly recommend acquiring short story anthologies as a way of getting introduced to new writers. (The same goes for readers, naturally.) In this volume you'll find Sarte, Kafka, Borges, Camus, Aichinger, Boll and many others including my first encounter with Pär Lagerkvist in a story called "Saviour John." 

Barabbas was published in 1950. The following year Lagerkvist received his Nobel Prize in Literature. The book explores faith, doubt, guilt, and the search for meaning through the eyes of the man who was released instead of Jesus.

What strikes me about Lagerkvist's writing was the clarity of his prose--spare, direct, and unadorned, yet filled with gravitas. He's not focused on literary acrobatics. Rather, his aim is the quiet exploration of extraordinary themes.

The novel begins with the familiar biblical scene. Barabbas, a murderer and insurrectionist, watches as the crowd chooses his freedom and Christ's crucifixion. Although he is physically liberated, he becomes psychologically imprisoned by the event. Why was he spared? Who was this man who died in his place? And why do others believe He rose from the dead?

What a starting point. Everything flows out from this momentous event.

Unable either to believe or to forget, Barabbas drifts through life as an outsider. He witnesses the early Christian movement but remains skeptical. He meets followers of Christ whose certainty only deepens his own uncertainty. He longs to believe but finds himself incapable of faith.

Throughout the novel, Lagerkvist presents Barabbas as a man haunted by absence. He is neither a committed pagan nor a Christian, but someone suspended between belief and unbelief. His encounters with suffering, love, violence, and death never resolve his inner conflict. Instead, they intensify it.

Eventually Barabbas is taken to Rome as a slave, where he works in the mines alongside Christian prisoners. There he develops a deep friendship with Sahak, a simple but unwavering believer. Their contrasting responses to suffering become the emotional center of the novel. Sahak possesses a certainty Barabbas envies but cannot attain.

After Sahak's execution, Barabbas continues wandering through a world that seems both empty and mysteriously charged with divine possibility. During Nero's persecution of Christians, he is arrested and crucified alongside them—not because he fully understands or embraces their faith, but because he has come to identify himself with the One who died in his place.

The story ends ambiguously. Rather than presenting faith as easy certainty, Lagerkvist explores the possibility that some people spend their entire lives circling belief, haunted by grace yet unable to grasp it fully. The novel asks whether doubt itself may be a form of seeking—and whether redemption can reach even those who never find complete certainty.

The novel is also about identity, for as John Donne wrote:

No man is a island
Entire of itself

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main. 

In this sense, the story of Barabbas intersects with our story as well. Barabbas is not merely a man from the first century. He is every person who has wanted to believe but struggled to do so, every seeker caught between skepticism and hope, every wanderer haunted by the possibility that grace might be real.

The genius of Lagerkvist's novel is that it transforms an obscure biblical figure into Everyman—a soul searching for meaning in a world where faith and uncertainty walk side by side, where doubt is not always the enemy of belief but sometimes the road that leads us toward it.

Efficiency Gets You Nowhere Fast: Why Effectiveness Is Marketing’s Real Edge

"I lived on books. Books taught me how to think."--Seymour Hersh 

Marketing Matters, Business North
Published June 2026

When I first began working in a corporate environment one of the books I read was Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive. It was so packed with gems that for several years I read it at least once a year. 

 

The first chapter is “Effectiveness Can Be Learned” and the opening sentence pierces like an arrow: “To be effective is the job of the executive.” But right away Drucker underscores this by letting his readers know that there’s a big difference between effectiveness and efficiency. “The executive is, first of all, expected to get the right things done.” 

 

This distinction seems simple at first glance but it becomes more profound the longer you think about it. Efficiency, he said, is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. In marketing, it’s easy to confuse the two.

 

Many of us admire speed, productivity, automation, optimization, and multitasking. We celebrate go-getters who answer emails quickly, process orders rapidly, and fill every square on their calendars with activity. Entire industries have emerged to help us become more efficient. Software dashboards track our productivity. AI tools now promise to save hours. Consultants teach workflows, systems, and hacks.

 

None of this is inherently bad. Efficiency has value. But efficiency applied to the wrong objective simply gets you to the wrong destination faster. 

 

And that’s Drucker’s point. A company can become incredibly efficient at producing products no one wants. A sales team can efficiently pursue low-quality leads. A marketing department can perfectly execute campaigns directed to the wrong audience. A manager can spend an entire day clearing emails and attending meetings without advancing the organization’s mission a single inch. (I can tell you stories about meetings.)

 

In other words, efficiency asks: “How well are we doing this?” Effectiveness asks: “Should we even be doing this at all?” 

 

I'm guessing the marketplace is littered with businesses that were highly efficient right before they disappeared.

 

The railroad industry is a classic example. Many railroads believed they were in the railroad business when in reality they were in the transportation business. They became very good at operating railroads while airplanes, trucking, and automobiles redefined how people and goods moved across the country. They optimized the old model while the world changed around them. What works in Italy or Japan doesn't necessarily make sense here. Yet AMTRACK continues to burn (taxpayer) money while advocates push for new trains in California and here in Minnesota. Bite the bullet. Why this waste?

 

The same thing happens on a smaller scale every day. It’s probably not uncommon for business owners to obsess over reducing printing costs for their brochures without ever stopping to ask whether the brochure itself has any value. This is where marketing often goes sideways.

 

Many marketing conversations today revolve around metrics that look impressive but may not matter. I've written about this before. Clicks, impressions, views, followers, open rates, engagement percentages--these can all be useful indicators worth paying attention to, but they are not the ultimate question.

 

The ultimate question is simpler: Is this helping us achieve our real objective? If the goal is sales growth, are sales increasing? If the goal is customer loyalty, are customers returning? If the goal is brand awareness, are more qualified prospects entering the pipeline? If the goal is trust, are people recommending us to others? It's easy to become mesmerized by measurable activity while losing sight of meaningful outcomes.

 

This is why effectiveness requires clarity. You can't do the right things if you don't clearly define what “right” means.

 

I used to have a handwritten note taped on my wall where I could see it every day that said, "Nothing Unnecessary." I enjoyed multitasking and super-productivity. Then, early in my career, I got a review in which my boss pointed out that I was on a team. Relationships matter, too.  "Stop and smell the roses," he said. He respected my output but reminded me that efficiency can be a trap. 

 

In other words, as in much of life we need to find the Golden Mean.

 

Drucker famously said, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." That statement should probably be taped to every office wall.

 

This takes discipline because effectiveness often requires saying no. No to distractions.
No to shiny new toys. No to strategies that are fashionable but misaligned with your mission.
No to activities that consume time but produce little value. 

 

In marketing especially, the temptation is to chase every new platform, every trend, every tactic, every algorithm change. 

 

But effective marketing begins with understanding your customer, understanding your message, and understanding your purpose. Only then does efficiency become meaningful. Otherwise, we risk becoming very busy while accomplishing very little.

 

The challenge for leaders today is not merely improving execution. It is developing the wisdom to distinguish between activity and progress. Because the marketplace ultimately does not reward businesses that are merely active. It rewards businesses that are effective.

A Few Thoughts On Listening

“Most of us find it easier to speak of the importance of an individual than to show it in practice by listening to one.”  
--Os Guinness In Two Minds

How much better this world could be if we would make even the most basic attempts to hear what others are saying, or are trying to say.

Listening is one of the rarest gifts we can offer another human being. We often assume that communication is primarily about speaking, persuading, explaining, or defending our ideas. Yet Os Guinness points us in a different direction. "Nothing speaks louder to a hungry man than a meal," he writes, "and nothing speaks more clearly to a doubter than the not speaking of genuine listening." Silence, when coupled with attention, can communicate respect, compassion, and understanding more powerfully than any argument. (I'm ashamed when I think back on certain memories where I did all the talking.) 

Most of us know what it feels like to be unheard. We have all experienced conversations in which the other person was merely waiting for a chance to speak. As Guinness observes, it is easier to talk about valuing people than it is to demonstrate that value by truly listening to them. Genuine listening requires patience, humility, and the willingness to set aside our own agenda for a moment.

Harry Nilsson captured this universal frustration in his lyric, "Everybody's talkin' at me, they don't hear a word I'm sayin'." In an age of constant noise, social media, and endless commentary, those words may be more relevant than ever.

Imagine how much healthier our families, friendships, workplaces, churches, and communities could become if we simply made a greater effort to hear what others are saying—or trying to say. Listening does not guarantee agreement, but it can foster understanding. And understanding is often the first step toward wisdom, reconciliation, and genuine human connection.

Original painting by the author

To See or Not To See, That Is the Question

To understand the world we live in, we must first see it as it is. Not as "trained" or manipulated to see it. Where do our ideas come from? Our ideas about God, about right and wrong, about how we should live... are they chosen, or... what?

                                                                         Journal note, Aug. 25, 1985

A long lost friend sent me this verse, with the follow up explanation:

I looked to see
What I thought I saw,
But what I saw
I did not see.

"How many times do you think you see something, then turn to look and what you thought you saw wasn't what you were really looking at; in the real sense of it. On a more philosophical angle, every day we see past what's real to what we want to see, but only when we make efforts to truly see things for what they are we realize it's not what we wanted to see. Our minds and hearts trick us every day into believing what isn't real." ~ S.P.

 

In the end, the question is not merely “To see or not to see,” but whether we possess the humility and discipline to look again—especially when the first glance flatters us or confirms what we already believe. Every inherited idea about God, morality, politics, or human purpose arrives pre-loaded with the fingerprints of culture, fear, comfort, and desire. The verse from my friend reminds us that our minds are masterful editors, cropping out inconvenient details and airbrushing reality until it matches the story we prefer.

The longer I live the more I've come to distrust the popular narratives we're all supposed to accept and believe.  The "Big Bang" theory? The Population Bomb? The global warming apocalypse? That we're descended from monkeys?

True sight is not a passive act but an act of rigorous reconsideration, and a willingness to admit we were wrong when or if it leads to that. It's uncomfortable, yet it is the only path that leads out of the hall of mirrors and into something solid enough to build a life upon.

And once we have tasted that unfiltered view—even briefly—we cannot unsee it without doing violence to our own integrity. My friend’s words linger as both warning and invitation: keep looking, keep turning your head, keep questioning the comforting shapes your heart insists are there. In a world drowning in curated illusions, the most radical thing any of us can do is to see what is actually in front of us, accept it for what it is, and then decide, with open eyes, how we shall then live.