The dream of white picket fences is turning into a suburban nightmare as a result of the sub-prime mortgage scandal. McMansions may soon morph into apartment buildings. The face of suburbia is changing, as is the American dream. Younger generations, this CNN story reminds us, are opting for New Urbanism. I’ll elaborate on this in a later post. Via the Wolfeden.

Green Inventions Central explores the idea of meals and liturgy. She looks at two books in her post, Margaret Peterson’s Keeping House and Mark Galli’s Beyond Smells and Bells: The wonder and power of Christian liturgy. From Peterson’s book:

In the modern American culture, in which ‘busyness’ can seem simultaneously like the badge of a good life and like a curse that is impossible to escape, finding time to eat or to feed others can become a challenge. People eat on the run; they feed their children in the car; they skip breakfast, eat lunch at their desks, and panic when it is dinnertime.

She contrasts this with Galli’s classification of Sunday morning services — “gathering, word, sacrament, dismissal” — and seeks to apply Sunday liturgy to the evening dinner table.

Bob Barker is at odds with Iraqi culture. Neutering dogs is a foreign idea to people in Baghdad, where veterinarians are more like matchmakers than caretakers.