Recent Posts

book cover of Strong Towns by Charles Marohn

Book Review: Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles Marohn

American cities are failing. Most cities are insolvent, carrying debt they can't pay off as instructure maintenance costs loom and land values fall. What do we do?
book cover of Sprawl Repair Manual by Gail Tachieva

How Do We Fix Sprawl? Book Review: Sprawl Repair Manual by Gail Tachieva

Suburbia sprawls endlessly. Cities are insolvent. Entire neighborhoods slump into disrepair. How can we fix it all? This practical manual details a difficult, but doable, way forward.
the cover of the book Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar, looking like red and white parking sign

Book Review: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar

More space in America is dedicated to parking cars than to housing people. How did our built environment become this way? Why is parking so frustrating, the center of every zoning debate, and the key to reviving our towns?
close up of embroidered flowers on black fabric

Modern Quality: Where Do We Get Beautiful Things?

If you go to any major store, most of the stuff you can buy is cheaply made and ugly. Why? Quality and beauty make us happier and healthier. Where can we find them?
Randy standing in a lawn holding a large banner that says Randy Westlund for Post Falls City Council

Why I'm Running For City Council

I’m running for Post Falls City Council because I want my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren to grow up as part of a thriving, resilient, local community here in North Idaho.
orange and black butterfly with wings open resting on the surface of water with ripples going out around it

A DIY Future: How to Discover Options and Effect Change

How bad do things have to get before you try to change them? How do you figure out that change is even possible, and build up the inertia to act?
cover of the book Retrosuburbia by David Holmgren featuring a smiling man on a bike with three kids on the back, and a basketfull of greens in the front bike basket; he's smiling at a woman holding a baby goat, and another goat is standing in front of the bike nibbling the greens. A house, water tank, a man, and a woman wearing a baby on her back are in the background.

Book Review: Retrosuburbia: The Downshifters Guide to a Resilient Future by David Holmgren

Not everyone has 40 acres and a mule. This book explains how to be more sustainable, off-grid, and productive on a regular neighborhood lot!
the cover of the book Arbitrary Lines by M. Nolan Gray

Book Review: Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

You might expect zoning to be a boring topic, but M Nolan Gray makes a compelling case for why you ought to care about zoning, explaining what it is, where it came from—and why we should abolish it.
WWII propaganda poster with the words 'Your own vegetables all the year round…' above a picture of a basket of vegetables with the text 'if you dig for victory now' below'

Why Idaho Needs a Victory Garden Tax Credit

Global supply chains are fragile. We need supply chain resilience—especially food independence. To that end, we propose a “Victory Garden” tax credit, which, like its namesake in WWII, will prompt people to grow some of their own food. Dig for Victory!
a woman wearing a white hat, a blouse, and jeans crouches in a garden row while an older man standing near her holds a hoe, leaning over as if working, green trees in the background

What Is Localism?

Localism prioritizes the local above the distant, the organic above the centrally planned, insisting that local communities be stable, sustainable, and relatively self-sufficient. Here are seven ways localism benefits our communities.
the glassy water of the spokane river winds through banks of rounded river rocks, pine trees standing tall on the far side of the river and in the distance around the river bend

Seven Principles to Guide Development in Kootenai County

Our county faces rapid suburbanization and dramatic change of character as farmland is devoured by big development. Here are seven conservative principles we can use to guide the county’s future.

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About

We're Jacqueline and Randy, a blogging duo with backgrounds in tech, robots, art, and writing, now raising our family in northern Idaho.

Our goal is to encourage deliberate choices, individual responsibility, and lifelong curiosity by sharing stories about our adventures in living, loving, and learning.

Learn more about us.


Connect:

whoo@deliberateowl.com

Start here

Curious about our life and journey? Here are some good places to start reading:

Jacqueline and Randy leaning their heads together smiling at the camera

A Blog About Education, Lifestyles, and Community

A brief history of how the Deliberate Owl came to be and why we're writing a blog about us, our lives, and how we're living out our values.
Priests in red and gold celebrate a traditional Latin Mass

Discovering the Traditional Catholic Mass

How I discovered the traditional Latin Mass a few years ago, why that discovery changed everything for me, and what was wrong with the Novus Ordo Masses I'd attended.