New from FPR Books
Forget Karen, Think Lisa
It was the reaction I had seen so often in public school classrooms from teacher's pets: Conformity is always the right course. Rocking the boat is disruptive. Teachers and principals know what's best.
Bring Me My Bow of Burning Gold: Micturition and Its Discontents
Why have we persisted in peeing outdoors well after the advent of outhouses and toilets?
Saint Thinkery University for Unlimited Personalized Execution, or, STUUPE©
In my elder, more invulnerable years, when the Untied States had finally established a formal E. Unibus Pluram, I was appointed by lot to assume the position of SAT (Self-Actualizing Therapist[1]) at Saint Thinkery University for Unlimited Personalized Execution.
Wendell Berry and Zoom
While the futurists and transhumanists and purveyors of educational technologies would have us voluntarily cut off our arms so we can enjoy their fancy new prostheses, our priority should be to avoid dismembering ourselves.
Brass Spittoon: Digital Fatigue and Pastoral Care During a Pandemic
Jay Y. Kim reflects on pastoral care during the pandemic in light of his recent book Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age.
Common Good or Common Fear
In times of crisis a common fear can elicit behavior that appears similar to actions born of a commitment to the common good.
On the Banks of Sugar Creek
True, there is much on offer in the world more exciting than tromping around on the muddy bank of a creek in the middle of nowhere. I’m unlikely to convince naysayers otherwise. Deep in their hearts though, they too remember moments during which the light that shone on me at Sugar Creek shone in their own lives.
Coming Home, COVID-19 Style: A Moment to Reconsider the Natural Family
The lengthy drift from family to individual as the primary social unit carries an alluring promise of autonomy and individualism which sounds so good, so freeing, but it comes up lacking in times of crisis.
Consider the Forest: A Review of Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees
If a human timescale—privileging our experience and our hopes—is insufficient to understand the forest, then maybe we will be provoked to reconsider both the human and forestal timescale.
News and Notes
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From the Archives
Gutshot in the Gulf: The Information Age Springs a Definitive Leak
This leak at the bottom of the sea is a mirror held up to our uncomprehending selves.
The Need for Autarchy
Devon, PA. Thanks in part to the series of fine essays John Médaille has provided us during the last several weeks, the implicit economic...
To Hell with Earth Day; Long Live Arbor Day!
Once upon a time in America, schoolchildren celebrated a lovely little holiday called Arbor Day. The young scholars would sing songs about Johnny Appleseed, recite Joyce Kilmer into the ground, learn the difference between an oak and a maple, and bundle up against the spring chill to go outside and plant an actual tree.