Free Republic

Weyerhaeuser has broken ground on a $500 million plant in Arkansas to produce engineered lumber from the small trees that have piled up across the pine belt after the closure of many pulp and paper mills. It is a big bet on one of the most depressed commodities in America: pine trees that are too small, crooked or otherwise unfit for making lumber. The decline of pulp and paper mills has left some timberland owners with wood they can’t sell. Several ventures have sought to capitalize on the pulpwood glut, including burning it to generate electricity—locally and abroad—and manufacturing oriented...

Benedictine monks in Chama Canyon, New Mexico, encounter God through work, prayer and silence in the wildernessIn 1964, Father Aelred Wall, OSB (1917-84), and two other monks left Mount Saviour Monastery in New York to scout out remote locations to establish a new “daughter,” or off-shoot monastery. After visiting Maine and Minnesota, the monks came to northern New Mexico and laid eyes on a rancho in the wilderness of Chama Canyon, 75 miles north of Santa Fe. They declared, “This is it!” and established the Monastery of Christ in the Desert of Abiquiu (www.christdesert.org). At a time when religious communities...

The founder of Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope, discusses her conversion from Judaism, religious habits, family life, and current social upheaval Left: Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (www.motherofisraelshope.org); right: Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B. on Sept. 8, 2011, when the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel's Hope became a public association of the faithful under Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa. Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B. is founder of Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope (www.motherofisraelshope.org), a new religious congregation currently headquartered in the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, under the leadership...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain fought vigorously over who would be toughest on congressional earmarks. "We need earmark reform," Obama said in September during a presidential debate in Oxford, Miss. "And when I'm president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely." President Barack Obama should prepare to carve out a lot of free time and keep the coffee hot this week as Congress prepares to unveil a $410 billion omnibus spending bill that's riddled with thousands of earmarks, despite his calls for restraint and efforts...