Front Porch Republic
Leaving the Keys in the Truck: Trust, Tension, and the Rural Bargain
Trust in rural places isn’t built on virtue; it’s built on visibility. It’s knowing you’ll see the person again.
From the Editor: Local Culture 7.1
There is no law preventing us from being worthy pupils of the spring rains, the dead, and the plants. We can mind first principles; we can keep our hands off…
Remodeling the Porch
Amateur operations are fragile and tenuous. But we’re grateful for a much-improved virtual home.
Time To Tell The Truth
How much longer will we prioritize a Wild West notion of freedom over protecting children and teens? The truth is, like cigarettes and alcohol, these devices are incompatible with healthy…
The Full Life of Empty Rural Spain
Though we may choose to live out our lives differently upon the land, there remain in both places people who still care for and respect land and community. I have…
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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Life, Death, and Branding Day
“The Good Life, According to Gen Z.” Maya Sulkin talks with several Gen Zers who, in good Porcher fashion, left the big-city corporate rat race to move back home: “In…
Land, Cheating, and Work
“How Major League Baseball Lost its Soul.” Bill Kauffman may be biased, but at least he’s honest: “I highly recommend Homestand, Will Bardenwerper’s new book contrasting the community-enhancing qualities of…
Cancer Cures, Manatees, and Enology
“We are Letting Schools Poison our Children.” Hadley Freeman has some harsh (but accurate) critiques of ed tech: “You don’t need to be Mr Gradgrind to be repulsed by this…
Handshakes, Extinction, and Chess
“The Intellectual Virtues of the Small Magazine.” Jeff Reimer brilliantly narrates the joys of an intellectual life and the role that small magazines can play in foster this: ‘Now remember…
More Articles
Seeking the Sacred: Douthat’s Case for Religious Tradition in an Age of Uncertainty
We are pilgrims in this world. We must be content to wonder as we wander. Douthat is asking his readers to cast their nets into the deep.
Bobwhite
Every year that we farm in the old ways, more of nature returns, despite the mistakes we make. Each return teaches hope.
It Ain’t Funny: Or, Why We Don’t Laugh Together
The laughter of a faithless culture is bitter, derisive. It no longer springs from a merry heart but from dry bones. A culture of faith is a culture that can truly laugh.
Teaching Like a Prize Fighter
To throw pedagogical punches is not to berate students; it’s to engage them in the ring. Most of them just need a nudge, a little jab that’s meant to be blocked.
The Family Barber
A person cannot multitask while performing it; instead, all else disappears, and only the person for whom one is caring in this physical way remains the focus for several minutes
Excelsior
My mom knew that she could not transfer the entire corpus of Western thought to us because she didn’t have it. But she did have love
Heroic Romanticism
It's entirely possible that many will give up human relationships, turning instead to the safety and predictability of technology, like an AI companion
Keeping A Culture: A Review of Thoroughness and Charm
Classroom culture may develop accidentally, but the truth is that a neutral classroom does not exist. Although her apologia is intended for classical Christian educators, Gerth speaks to all teachers
1.5 Speed to Nowhere
Over the decades, I suppose I learned a lot from podcasts; plenty of facts and all the “sides” to stories. Very little of those things seem to matter to me now
Of a Woodstove
I’ve heated with wood for a winter, and I am pleased to do so, but it’s backbreaking labor to warm this way for a lifetime
On Being Indifferent
The politics of Jesus are “brutally modest.” “Jesus’ life seems to have been mostly one of local, familial labor and relations, carried out in the compass of a small town or village . . .
From the Archive
Narnia Against the Machine: Deep Magic for the Modern Age
Witnessing the ascendancy of the Machine, Lewis understood what was at stake. He watched this ideology sweep across his society and take hold in its schools, and he keenly felt…
Spiritual Secession: A Conversation with Paul Kingsnorth
" None of your readers need me to tell them that the useful work is practical, particular, small and careful: to get away from screens as much as we can, get…
Cultivating the Skills that Freedom Requires in Matthew Crawford’s Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road
Human driving requires unending mutual predictions and constant accommodations for each other. It is in such experiences that we end up with something meaningful for life in the physical world…
The Whole Hog
Alexandria, VA They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sometimes tell how the book’s designers wanted the book to be judged at first glance.…
Working with Words
Our relationship was still in its early swoon when Nate came to pick me up from work one night. He was so obviously excited to see me that even my…