A year very full of babies and book writing! I'm making a lot less progress through my planned reading than I hoped, but I think this might be the longest list of "favorite" reads to date. So not too bad a year. And my oldest is reading BOB books on her own, so one day… Read More
The Power Broker’s Retreat from Reality
I spent my summer maternity leave reading The Power Broker (and taking care of the baby!). I was glad to get to write about Caro's masterpiece for Word on Fire. As Moses makes himself sovereign over parks, power plants, bridges, and housing, he unmakes his ability to steward what he has seized. He becomes both… Read More
Give Parents a Baby Bonus
At Deseret, I'm making the case for a baby bonus as fair and flexible help for parents and children. A “baby bonus” is an effective way to provide support to more families with fewer complications. Every family has unique needs, and flexible assistance can help parents serve the best interests of their children in their… Read More
Don’t Ask AI to Draw God
I'm at Word on Fire making the case against AI-created devotional art. Each of the children’s books on our “God shelf” has a human hand, heart, and intellect behind it. Each book grew out of the love the author and illustrator had for God, for beauty, and for the little readers to come. Thinking about… Read More
Colleges Must Offer Formation, Not Amenities
Colleges donors are starting public fights with college administrators. At Deseret, I argue that's a good thing. Colleges should be contested spaces—they need to offer values-informed formation, not a generic education. It will be tempting for schools to keep spending on extraneous amenities to capture students, especially if they see them primarily as customers, not… Read More
Books I Hope to Read in 2024
Last year, I read all the books I put on my to-read list! (I last accomplished this feat in 2020, when I had a baby... and a pandemic). Overall, my reading has suffered the predictable consequences of having two children (and not counting all the bedtime picture books). I read 88 books and a little… Read More
My Favorite Books of 2023
It's been a turbulent but mostly good year, with some pileups of new projects, two sisters old enough to play together, and a new job on the horizon for the new year. No novels on my best of the year list, which makes me a little sad, but a lot that I enjoyed on the… Read More
Making Repair Beautiful
When Plough announced an issue themed around repair, I knew I wanted to interview Grace Russo about her practice of visible mending. When Russo began repairing her clothes, it changed what kinds of new clothes she wanted to buy. When she looked at something on the rack or at a thrift store, she didn’t just… Read More
The Gospel Comes with a Children’s Potty
I made my Christianity Today debut to argue that churches should welcome children by design... and that means building child sized toilets into their bathrooms. I can see how much easier it is for her to use the child-sized, real-plumbing toilets at her school, but we don’t have the same option at church or at… Read More
Putting a Price on “Unpaid Work”
At Deseret, I responded to Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek's After Work: The Fight for Free Time, and its thought-provoking ideas about how to value "unpaid work." Labor-saving innovations don’t make as much sense when the work process is valuable, not just the output. When work is evaluated for the formation it gives us, it’s… Read More