A few years ago I dated a guy who seemed terrific. Nate (not his real name) was cute, smart, funny, and athletic. Oh, and he happened to be a management consultant.
Our relationship was still in its early swoon when…
July 2009
I don’t like machines. I find them dirty, confusing and, even worse, boring. I also don’t much enjoy working with my hands. I like reading books and telling people, in text or speech, what they should think about them. These…
When I read “Shop Class As Soulcraft,” I initially felt like a twerp. I’m the guy who was raised in the country by a father who tried to teach him how to fix a car, repair plumbing, and so forth.…
As so often seems to be the case, the Monty Python troop somehow managed to make Matthew Crawford’s point about the enduring value of working with your hands decades before the rest of us realized that a bunch of self-proclaimed meritocratic…
A conference with this title convened in St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford, England, on Saturday, July 11. Organized by the G.K. Chesterton Institute, the great Chestertonian Father Ian Boyd offered greetings to the participants while the gentlemanly Southern attorney, John Odom…
Several years ago I (sarcastically) noted a hot trend in the DC Metropole – the outsourcing of many mundane tasks seen as superfluous and distracting from the busy lifestyles of the harried DC cosmopolite. At the edge of the economic…
Thanks to FPR reader and my fellow Hoosier Brandon Seitz for pointing us to The Daily Yonder, a webzine dedicated to writing about and analyzing what’s going on in rural America. I’ve only begun to poke around, but it certainly…
Joe Carter weighs in at First Things with a set of challenging reservations about the relevance of Matt Crawford’s arguments for a more general audience. He rightly notes that it’s an argument made by an egghead largely read by eggheads.…
Rome, Kentucky.… This week my dear Cousin Kate is otherwise occupied Marie Antoinetting around that patch of pigweed and thistle she calls her garden, and has decided not to post on her usual Thursday in favor of spending her time
East Lansing, MI.… Mark Mitchell’s brief essay on Sarah Palin reminded me of a Treasonous Clerk installment I wrote back in November, contemplating the significance of Palin’s persona for American politics and culture. Though an instinctive admirer of Palin’s populist
Wichita, KS…
Over the July 4th weekend, we made a quick trip south to Dallas, and were blessed with a brief look at that particular large chunk of the American southwest, with all its geographic and historic and cultural particularity.
The tractors came. The horses
Stood in the fields, keepsakes,
grew old, and died. Or were sold
as dogmeat. Our minds received
the revolution of engines, our will
stretched toward the numb endurance
of metal. And that old speech
by…
I must apologize to all our readers and my fellow contributors here for the intrusion of my cousin Cassie Pigeon in a recent post under my byline.
I had my extended family to a picnic on the Fourth, and my reward…
ROCK ISLAND, IL…
It’s getting apocalyptic. The U.S. is shedding celebrities, freaks, and athletes like old skin. Neither Alaska nor Illinois has the governor it started its most recent gubernatorial charade with. The hateful Minnesota Twins are closing in on
Washington, CT. …Brains as Brawn have gotten we exiles from the Garden of Eden into a lot of trouble over the years. Though capable of spectacular expressions of beauty and love, we more frequently traffic in sordid acts that lie
Claremont, CA…. When she is six months pregnant with their baby, Verona and her boyfriend Burt almost move to Montreal – because a couple they knew in college lives there. That’s after they almost move to Phoenix (because her
