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Last day of August haul! I'm thinking dinner: roasted butternut squash soup, crispy okra on the side, buttermilk biscuits and fresh muscadine grape jelly.
What are you eating, where you're at?
10 hours ago
Here are our garden ingredients for an Indiana curry.
The asparagus are ready for harvest here on the first day of spring! Victoria, Australia.
Chicken and gnocchi soup with cheese and apples on the side. KC MO
I'll be there for dinner at 6! 🙂
Roasted acorn squash and fresh blueberries
So many tomatoes here in Michigan! (And basil to to go with them.) I need to do some hot water bath canning but have no time, so I made my Californian husband happy with a big batch of salsa de chile de árbol. Between the kids and him, it won't last through one week and we'll empty many bags of tortilla chips. I also made a pot of red pepper/tomato basil bisque for one meal and Pizza Margherita for another.
I’m Zone 6b, and I planted later than usual. We have lots of tomatoes, cukes, okra, and some Persian melons right now. Sweet potatoes should be ready to harvest soon.
We're eating nachos - I didnt grow the ground turkey, cheese, avocados, or corn tortillas, but grew and/or made the other ingredients: refried beans, lettuce, tomato, salsa, guacamole. In SC
Zone 6A Michigan. From the garden, we will be having noodles from spaghetti squash with marinara (homegrown tomatoes, basil, oregano, and garlic), roasted broccoli, and watermelon. The only things not from the garden are the mozzarella and parmesan.
Willamette valley Oregon: Today we had fried rice with leftover rice from earlier, ham from the freezer, some yellow wax beans from the garden and garlic chives and tarragon, also from the garden. With a side of green (Costco) and beefsteak tomatoes with smoked salt (thank you, garden)
We had roasted tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch! I made some fried green tomatoes earlier this week and we've been eating a lot of ratatouille. So grateful for this little fertile patch of soil we have!
i had marry-me-lentils and goldenberries for breakfast and thinking i might bake a pizza in my vacant granny-flat because i do not run my oven in the summer. Did you know that in places like Turkey, a local bread bakery takes your tray of kebabs or vegetables or whatever you want to bake, and bakes it for you for a dollar? because most people don't have ovens. People go stand in line to pick up the tray of food they dropped off there earlier in the day. It's the best thing I ever saw in my life. They aren't baking bread in the afternoon and evening, so they become the neighborhood oven. a Dollar.
Fried green pepper sandwiches.
That sounds so delicious! Yum!
I do have a few more posts on history that I intended to put up this week, but y'all will have to wait because I want you to listen to this instead.
Those of you who grew up in 1970s evangelicalism might particularly appreciate this Sunday post. There are many parts of my fundamentalist/cult-adjacent/Gothardized upbringing that I have rejected. Not my faith, just to be clear. But a huge raft of the hanging-on accoutrements, such as not listening to "secular music." Or so my parents informed me, when I was a child. I realized later in life that this was a quite flexible category, as we had a ton of Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, and Simon and Garfunkel records that I was free to put on the turntable. (Is Gilbert and Sullivan secular? Maybe a grey area there.)
But we listened to a *lot* of Don Francisco.
I just looked him up. He's eighty now, apparently still working in Louisville. Don Francisco was one of the soundtracks of my youth.
I still love so many of his songs. And I had no idea that Dolly Parton sang "He's Alive" at the 1990 Dove awards.
So join me in today's flashback.
1 day ago
We listen to this song (Dolly's version) every Easter morning as soon as we get home from church. ❤
My favorite realization of adulthood is that nothing is really secular (at least not in the way we were taught to use the word). There is either sacred or profane and a whole lot more things fall into the sacred category than I ever imagined.
I still keep Don Francisco's "He's Alive" on my playlist. 😊 Definitely part of the soundtrack of my youth.
Definitely goosebumps!
Love love love Dolly. So happy I got to see her in concert. Thanks for sharing.
“Cult-adjacent” I appreciate that term.
“Everybody else but me… 🎶 … everybody else but me… 🎶 He was talkin’ to the hypocrite and Pharisee… everybody else but me.” 🎶
Gilbert and Sullivan secular? The Mikado appears to have escaped being put on the little list.
😂 Gilbert & Sullivan were “on the little list” in our house too!
Auditions with her songs 😭
I also listened to a LOOOOOT of Don Francisco! His music is still good even if his theology is not.
I listened to this very recording yesterday in my Dolly remembrance. It’s fantastic!
Don Francisco's music was a formative part of my upbringing as well and I still love and listen to him even while casting to the side many of the rigid stances I grew up with in the midst of fundamentalist Christian upbringing. Those songs, including "He's Alive," were an important part of my formation as what I identify as now a Christian who has also gone through Catholic RCIA. I think what sets his music apart is the lyricism combined with the musicality which is so different than the monotonous, rave type music that has been popular for a long time in contemporary Christian circles.
Don Francisco= soundtrack to my childhood 🥰
So beautiful like the woman she was
Love that song. He’s alive and I’m forgiven, Heaven’s gates are open wide ❤️
That performance gave me goosebumps.
Yeah me too. Everything from the leaving fundagelicalism but not Jesus, no secular music, and liking Don Francisco. Escaped an abusive Gothardite husband. Currently studying theology, cult recovery, related psychology/sociology and constantly seeing how many (not all of course) secular songs or movies or novels are healthier and more godly than many of the "Christian" ones...including hymns and worship songs even, with very unhealthy and unscriptual ideas in them.
I had no idea! Thank you for sharing this
Don still lives in Colorado, but is no longer in Louisville.
She also is alive, thank God. Used her loaned breath so very well❤️
Her loss has hit us hard in East Tennessee.
I wasn't into Don Francisco, but I was more into Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Sandy Patty, inter alia. Yes, I remember this song, and I found myself singing along at parts. That was fabulous!
Last week turned into AI week; I have a feeling that this week is going to be about history.
Let's start with David Barton.
This week, the Wall Street Journal ran a fairly comprehensive profile of Mr. Barton, thanks to his well-funded, activist campaign to advance the idea that the separation of church and state in the United States is a myth, and to promote (his own version of conservative Christian) religion as part of American public education.
This link should take you to a non-paywalled version of the article, and I'd encourage you to read it:
www.wsj.com/politics/policy/texas-who-is-david-barton-460d7029?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I'm aware that some followers of my account are also fans of David Barton, and that's your privilege. I'd just like to point out, with the help of the article, that Barton is not a historian.
For two reasons.
First, he has no training in how to handle historical sources and evidence.
"Historian" can be a closely guarded term. When I was doing my PH.D. work in American Studies, there was a pretty substantial segment of the academic history world that discounted anyone doing interdisciplinary work as "not really a historian." That impulse remains in academia. But I took all of the courses in historiography, research methods, and philosophy of history that the history Ph.D. candidates took. (Plus the literary theory courses that they didn't, but that's another topic.)
Mr. Barton did not. He has a bachelor's degree in religious education from ORU. That's it.
(Summary here: www.concordmonitor.com/2025/10/07/my-turn-david-barton-texas-education/)
Can you write history without having a degree in history? Yes, of course, if you commit to the rigorous, difficult task of learning how to handle sources. There is absolutely no evidence that Mr. Barton has done so. Instead, we have this:
**
David Barton, a sprightly 72-year-old conservative political activist, strolled inside to his prized collection: tens of thousands of founding-era American documents and artifacts he values at millions of dollars.
Barton darted among glass cases and rattled off the highlights of his trove: a Revolutionary War-era shot flask, a 1795 handwritten prayer proclamation from Samuel Adams, and what he says is a lock of George Washington’s hair.
A former math and science teacher with no academic training as a historian, Barton has used this vast collection to position himself as the intellectual architect of a movement advancing a conservative agenda in policy and education.
“I own the stuff,” Barton said. “So I know more about this history than most of the professors.”
**
Owning stuff does not a historian make.
(Both John Fea, at thewayofimprovement.blog/2026/08/24/quick-thoughts-on-that-david-barton-article-in-the-wall-stree..., and Warren Throckmorton, who did an excellent interview for our podcast at podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/are-homeschool-history-programs-accurate-w-dr-warren/id1704363746?i..., have weighed in on this.)
But that leads us to the second reason why Barton is not a historian.
His primary motivation isn't to write an accurate account of the past. It is to promote a narrow political point of view.
Barton isn't alone in this, of course. A number of historians (who actually HAVE historical training) fall into this category. Howard Zinn (I am not a fan) comes to mind.
But Barton's is not only political, but tied to a single party position that spans a whole range of issues unrelated to the founding fathers and their religious positions.
**
On a typical day, Barton spends hours fielding texts and calls from contacts in think tanks, legislatures, Congress and the White House, his son Tim said. He often works until 3 a.m., with a John Wayne movie in the background.
A former vice chair of the Republican Party of Texas, Barton counts Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) among his allies.
“I was introduced to David and his ministry a quarter-century ago, and it has had such a profound influence on me and my work and my life and everything I do,” Johnson told a gathering of state legislators in 2021.
Last year, before the federal cuts to USAID, Barton met with State Department officials in Washington, D.C. In a conference room at the agency, he laid out how the U.S. had limited foreign aid before World War II, he said....
Barton and his nonprofit also regularly counsel a coalition of hundreds of state lawmakers on issues, from the evils of in vitro fertilization to the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance, he says.
He and this network have been in action since the Supreme Court in 2022 swept aside a decades-old legal test that had kept religious displays and practices out of public schools.
Texas state Sen. Phil King, a longtime ally, worked with WallBuilders and a religious-liberty law firm to draft a bill requiring a Ten Commandments display in every Texas classroom.
**
Historians should have proper training in how to evaluate and understand sources.
Historians should not be working in service of a political party.
If one of those criteria is compromised, be wary.
If both are violated, walk away.
Here endeth the lesson.
Are Homeschool History Programs Accurate? w/ Dr. Warren Throckmorton
podcasts.apple.com
Podcast Episode · The Well-Trained Mind podcast · S5 E5 · 1h 3m5 days ago
I am so grateful for my kids' teachers at Well-Trained Mind Academy in history. From the start, they reinforce that history is an active conversation that we participate in daily. My kid had an assignment this week where she selected a photograph and wrote her memory of it, then interviewed me for my recollection of the event pictured. Of course our accounts were different, and it led to such a great discussion of what makes us remember certain things and how the perspective of the writer greatly impacts what information is passed on.
Aw I love Howard Zinn.
I just get a paywall?
Thank you for writing this. He was a regular speaker at homeschool conferences when I was a kid, and he recently "helped" rewrite the social studies standards for the state of Texas public education system. As a public school teacher of 14 years, I have serious concerns about the historical validity of the new standards he helped write. I appreciate this very factual viewpoint.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this. My family went to hear him speak when I was in grade school. It has taken me a long time to sort through what things I learned that were true versus what things I learned that were misrepresentations, at best.
Dr. Wise Bauer, do you have a recommendation for the best one-volume overview of American History written by a fair-minded person NOT within the Christian tradition, but not jaundiced against it?
As an academic, I find your second argument much more persuasive than your first one.
Why is his interpretation of American history so important to him?
Have you posted previously about Howard Zinn? I’d love to hear your thoughts on his work.
I am not a big fan of monopolies, and I think we have developed something of a monopoly on education, particularly in the authority we automatically give to credentials. A degree can tell us something about someone’s training. It does not establish the quality of someone’s scholarship. One of my favorite historians, Edward Gibbon, had no university degree at all. His work is worth engaging because of the quality of his historical research and arguments, not because of a credential. It took earning degrees for me to understand how unnecessary a degree is for many self driven individuals. Yet today we often act like Dorothy’s Lion, who needs a ribbon to be brave, or the Scarecrow who needs a document to use his brain. I am not a particular fan of Barton off the cuff, and I agree that his claim that “owning historical documents makes him more knowledgeable” is laughable: more a political brag done in poor taste than any valid point. But his lack of a history degree does not prove that his historical arguments are wrong any more than his political involvement does. I would rather someone wear his political commitments on his sleeve than pretend he has none. At least then I can see the slant and account for it. As E. B. White famously observed, all writing has a slant. Political involvement should make us scrutinize someone’s work. It should not substitute for scrutinizing the work itself. And when a historian claims to have no political opinion, that does not mean those influences are absent from his work. Barton should be judged by the sources he uses, how accurately he represents them, what context he includes or leaves out, and whether his conclusions withstand examination. I think the same standard should apply to historians whose politics I find much more congenial. So I will take the criticisms here seriously, but I am going to read Barton’s arguments myself before deciding where he is right and where he is wrong. And on the broader question of the “separation of church and state,” I think every individual claim deserves to be examined rather than dismissed with the phrase itself. The phrase can be used correctly, but it can also become a rhetorical shortcut that labels a subject as something that supposedly should not be part of government instead of addressing the actual constitutional or historical question. I do not agree with that reasoning.
What’s it feel like up on the Mountain of “I have a PHD. I’m smarter than the rest of you. I’ve read more books - so I’m qualified to say who is a historian and who isn’t” looking down on lesser mortals? I suppose Jesus was “unlearned” and “uneducated “ as well? John 7: 14 Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” 16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.
I love David Barton & Wallbuilders ❤️ The Bible is the greatest Book, History or otherwise. It should be taught if we are to know and be wise. Calling them activists is laughable. The activists are the ones who got the Bible out of school.
I remember someone telling me how much they loved Barton because he taught things they never learned in public school. 🫣
I fear that this topic is a case of "preaching to the choir." those who care about integrity and truth when dealing with history are already aware and in agreement. Those who have chosen a side based on religious zealousness will claim he is divinely gifted by God and doesn't need earthly credentials. It's a sad time to be in the USA. I used to believe that educating people is the answer, but I now believe that if it was going to work, it would be working. You must keep teaching. But this is much deeper than a lack of education on what makes a historian. Don't get discouraged if some people don't hear. Historians (and scientists too) who keep educating in this atmosphere are needed.
Hearing him in my teens, I recall a message not centered around the things historians typically address- nuance, context, critical thinking, fresh voices in the record - but activism. Essentially he provided, when I heard him, the equivalent of a tabloid "Stars! They're just like you!" except to his fundamentalist audience it was "Founders and historical heroes! They thought just like you!" Which is patently and historically irresponsible and false. It's very useful to give your preferred policies a little fake halo and a little fake historical patina for palatability, and he is good at providing that to his fans in the halls of Congress and in think tank offices.
Didn't you write a fiction book 30+ years ago? I think it had a purple cover. That was you, wasn't it? Back in the AOL days? I think it's time to read that one again. I know I have it around here somewhere. (went searching online - it definitely had purple on the cover. A purple eagle flying on a black background. The Revolt)
The curriculum we used was amazing... but you wrote it. Once when attending a homeschool convention, one of the sessions I elected to attend was on the founding of America. It was not as I expected, as the speaker basically used Barton's material, making it a disappointing session. On another completely irrelevent note, years ago when living in Virginia (Newport News/Hampton area) you met my daughter. She loved your history curriculum, and you were a mini celebrity among my kids. When you passed through where she had a part time job, she realized you were "the Susan Wise Bauer." But she acted professional and didn't want to say anything to you besides the customer service she gives to every customer. Of course, I felt you would have loved to know she was a homeschool kid who had gone through your books, but she was too shy. We chose your curriculum because it was well written. Personally, I still pick it up on occasion.
I'm a conservative Christian with a degree in history, and I share your concerns about Barton. The Christian call to honesty and integrity means that Christians seeking to do work in history ought to do it with great care to represent the past accurately. Btw, I respect the title of historian and don't claim it for myself since I only have a bachelor's degree in it. I know I would need more thorough training and work in the field for that title to apply to me.
I got a copy of one of Barton's controversial books years ago and flipped to the Acknowledgements page to see what historians had given him feedback as he was drafting the book. The answer: zero. He listed out authors of books he had read, his research assistants, and his wife. That's it. If even trained historians need feedback on their work, one would hope an amateur historian would want to seek it out.
If you don’t have the training to handle sources, you’re not doing history — you’re pushing an agenda. That’s the difference that Barton misses every time.
My daughter was a history and religion major at a conservative Christian college. Her history professors were sticklers for truth and accuracy without bias, so taught warming signs for lesser work. David Barton was specifically discussed and why his work did not measure up. Fast forward to the end of the semester and she notified me that I had materials for her younger brother acquired at the homeschool convention that she believed should be trashed. After further research, a pretty pennies worth of materials hit the trash can. The Bible teaches us that God is Love. God is Truth. It doesn't serve God to stray from the truth to benefit a preferred narrative. Slapping a Christian label on something doesn't mean it holds up under the light of Truth.
Oh thank you. I am also not a fan of Howard zinn.
This is so well articulated. Thank you! 🙏
As a guy about his age who does have a degree in history I would say that too many want to pick and choose what part of the constitution (and for that matter the Bible) they “believe” and conveniently ignore or explain away the parts they don’t like. The separation of church and state has been part of our history long before his particular ideology can into the public domain. You cannot have religious liberty if you don’t allow it for other citizens. Stopping the state from denying it to others is what the separation is all about.
Paywall still there
