Eco Catholic

Proportion is important to an environmentalist, a writer, a living room and a person.

When David and Linda Headley bought their 116-acre farm in rural Fayette County near the West Virginia border in 2005, they thought they were buying their dream property, a place to build a home, raise a family and enjoy the outdoors.

What they ended up with, they told Catholic News Service, was a nightmare.

These days when David and Linda and sons Adam, 5, and Grant, 17, look out from their front porch they see the telltale signs of a natural gas well less than 600 feet away: condensate tanks, vent pipes, pipelines and control valves.

Ask any animal lover: The best Christmas presents do not always come decorated with silver paper and red bows, but rather sounding with woofs, meows and chirps.

For Carol Deyo of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, her gifts have arrived early this year, in the form of big brown deer eyes, masked bandit raccoon faces and a favorable decision from a government agency of humans.

Microclimates get a lot of attention from farmers and gardeners. You can grow a good crop on the north side of the property in the global South or on the lean of the hill in the American West.

Christmas is like a microclimate, a time when we are responsive to the seasonal weather. One of my long-term unemployed parishioners wept recently in my office. He said, “It’s hard enough week after week but to have no money at Christmas, it is cruel. Not to mention what Congress is trying to not do for us in extending benefits.”