Front Porch Republic
Dwight MacDonald’s Self-Critical Integrity
What am I willing to lose to preserve the humanity of my neighbor?
Against Culture–Therapy, That Is
"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” —Viktor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning
Conviviality on the Porch
I [reflected] on this fragmented nature of modern neighborhoods while attending my first ever FPR conference, held last weekend in Indianapolis.
A Practice of Collecting
What follows is my account of Doug’s collecting adventures, and of a life spent noticing what other people overlook.
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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I’ll Be Right in That Space: Songs About Marriage
We’re listening to songs about marriage this week, and limiting ourselves to songs about reasonably happy marriages, at that. Send your song suggestions to symposiumofsongs@gmail.com!
Wildcat, Microdramas, and Literacy
John Byron Kuhner describes how seven years living alone brought a slow, strange healing.
A Feeling I Don’t Want to Know
I guess not every day of the week has a feeling to it—it’s hard to imagine doing a show on Songs About Tuesday—but Sunday certainly does. Actually, it’s got a…
More Articles
An Homage to Berry from two Public Health Professors Yearning for a Better Way
If healing returns the body to itself, then Berry’s vision of public health might very well be to return the community to itself.
Truth or consequences?
Consequentialism is a way to try to replace tradition all in one go, with “rational calculation.”
Rebuilding Communities Together
Mr. Eliot asks: “What life have you, if you have not life together? / There is not life that is not in community.”
Growing up Greenwood
Morgan's Salt Pork and Dandelion Greens: Growing up Greenwood [is] a memoir about growing up in the mid-twentieth century in the western mountains of Maine.
Of Popes and Ploughmen
How did a Baptist, Kentucky farmer come to sound so much like the Magisterium of the Catholic Church?
Their Land
Will the new owners love that land as much as my parents? I hope so. But I know they won’t love it more.
When Government Oversight Fails Appalachia
Two very different crises reveal the same failure: authorities had the power to act but failed those they were meant to protect.
The Costs of Making Houses into Commodities
Americans have sacrificed meaningful homes and strong communities for market pressures.
Silence in Ruins
To see silence in this way requires a certain stillness in me and a trust that silence is there to be found.
Does Wisdom Belong to the Aged? Samuel Moyn’s Gerontocracy in America.
The rhetorical method of the book is, above all, snark.
Prepare for War
We are mediated from war—largely because we are mediated from reality—now more than ever.
From the Archive
Forsaking Success: Wendell Berry’s Return to Kentucky
As one Kentuckian wondered, why would he give up the “glitz and glamour” elsewhere to come back home to farm?
Severe Mercies and Magnanimous Despair
If students grew up moving from city to city, or if they hail from a soulless suburb, or if they are inevitably complicit in economic and social systems they deplore,…
Work and Prayer: The Brief Friendship of Thomas Merton and Wendell Berry
Berry wrote in one of his letters to Merton that “you are one of the few whose awareness of what I’m doing here would be of value to me.” He…
Tanya Berry’s Faithful Art
Women like Tanya bring artistry and honor to everything they touch: the homes they inhabit, the land they steward, the children they raise. These photographs are testimony to the clear,…
Live like a Tree
I am an unlikely localist. My life is a product of globalization. My mother’s side of the family is from Singapore, China, and India, linked to each other through the…