“Lucky to be Grateful.” Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn expresses gratitude for Wendell Berry’s latest novel and his faithful voice speaking truth over many decades, and she ponders whether those who have experienced loss are, in fact, the lucky ones: “How many people are even saying or thinking it in the very moment in which I write this thought—or you read it? Whether for those uttering the sentiment or those hearing it expressed, an inevitable addendum follows: Why? Lucky. . . how so? Lucky. . .for what? The outpouring of thoughts we have from Wendell Berry—in the form of poetry, essays, and fiction—is nothing if not a sustained answer to this question.”
“Creating Membership.” Jake Meador responds to the novel by reflecting on the conditions needed to form community: “The Burley tobacco program so beloved by Berry and central to the story of Marce Catlett is best understood, then, as a model of Christian political wisdom. It was a synthetic project designed and sustained by human endeavor that ensured that all parties in a given relationship benefitted from the work produced by that relationship. In other words, it demonstrates that social cohesion is not exclusively a product of material precarity that forces people together. Social cohesion can also be created when people determine to pursue each other’s good in common and structure their relationships in ways that are mutually uplifting.”
“Chesterton’s Radical Sanity.” I have a very different response to Chesterton’s distributism than does Rachel Lu, but her appreciation of his wit and wisdom is quite good: “In an era teeming with ‘influencers’ of the most noxious variety, it is deeply moving to read an author who is so adept with words, and yet so totally suffused with gratitude, humility, and purpose. But instead of waxing nostalgic, modern readers should take note. His age had its own noxious influencers. Ours has access to all the same sources of wisdom and insight that Chesterton once ‘discovered.’ It’s never too late to see the dazzling wonder of one’s own backyard.”
“Lord of the Gadflies.” John Rodden takes stock of the life and writings and significance of the uncategorizable John Lukacs: “Although he occasionally taught briefly at prestigious institutions elsewhere (Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts, the University of Pennsylvania), he remained at Chestnut Hill College until he retired in 1994. Lukacs was a scholar with impassioned convictions, high standards, and genuine integrity—a nearly impossible trio of commitments to maintain throughout seven decades of prolific writing.”
“What Happened After a Teacher Ditched Screens.” Jenny Anderson profiles a teacher who found Chromebooks were getting in the way of education: “Over and over again, though, Kane discovered that all of the dashboards and data analytics of ed tech did not make the individual needs of students clearer, nor did they much help those who were struggling. Instead, the screens offered students cover, a way to appear engaged without any actual sustained effort. Only when he got rid of all the laptops and tablets did the needs of his students become plain.”
“Inside Charleston’s Craft Renaissance.” Farahn Morgan describes how the American College of the Building Arts is giving a liberal arts education and an apprenticeship in craft: “In recent years, as the rapid development of artificial intelligence has given rise to anxieties about the future of work, the college has emerged as an early model for a more human-centered craft education. It offers a holistic alternative to the traditional university-to-white-collar route, one that focuses on training both the body and the mind. The idea is to prepare students for the coming era of technological disruption by helping them develop a deeper understanding of those qualities that have traditionally shaped the built environment: empathy, patience, humor, and an appreciation of beauty. These are not easily replaced by machines, precisely because they’re rooted in humanity.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)
“To Write Well Is Human.” Nadya Williams begins her essay about the dangers of passing off the work of writing to a machine by praising the good desire that leads people to want to write: “Whether they hope to produce novels, poetry, or essays, many people who write using AI want what writers have always wanted: to take perfectly ordinary words and turn them into something extraordinary. There’s something transcendent and soul-moving to beautiful writing, no matter the genre or shape of the piece, because writing—as other creative endeavors—reflects our basic nature as image bearers of God. Just as our God is a creator, we have a desire to create things of beauty, including with our words.”
“Joe the Hero.” Mark Oppenheimer tells about a schoolmate of his who lacked legs but not courage: “Joe came up only to Tom’s waist. But Joe had authority. He was a handsome, square-jawed boy—man, really, 19 years old—dapper in the togs of our school’s jacket-and-tie dress code: He favored white shirts and red ties, and his blue blazer dragged on the ground as he walked. But also, Joe was the most badass, fearless, uncowed cripple any of us had ever met, with a massive muscularity in his chest, and arms pumped up by years of doing double duty as legs.”
“Anthropic Debuts Preview of Powerful New AI Model Mythos in New Cybersecurity Initiative.” It’s hard to know how to take Anthropic’s breathless claims about it’s new model’s abilities, but it would be quite the plot twist if AI breaks the feasibility of secure networked computers. Lucas Ropek summarizes the situation: “Anthropic claims that, over the past few weeks, Mythos identified ‘thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities, many of them critical.’ Many of the vulnerabilities are one to two decades old, the company added.”
“Nick Offerman to Host “A Wonder is What it Is.’” For National Poetry Month, Nick Offerman is doing four radio episodes where he reads a poem by Wendell Berry and then reflects on it. The first episode can be found here. (Recommended by Dominic Garzonio.)
