Articles Archive
A Tale of Three “Porchers”
We live in fractured days, lacking in harmony, civility, and comity. “Comity,” an old word for courtesy and kindness, is related etymologically to the Sanskrit word for “smile.” As it…
Lessons on Limiting Liberty from Hannah and Burley Coulter
Wendell Berry's fiction shows what relationships look like with skin on—how real relationships are enacted between people. As the characters who inhabit the fictional town Port William interact, they demonstrate…
Learning to Read in 2023
Why does my third child, my little son whom I mention above, need me to be in physical contact with him while he reads? Because it helps him feel warm…
How to Buy a Dumb Phone (and How Not to Use It): A Reflection on FPR 2023
I did some research with the help of a “dumb phone finder” which told me the functions, network compatibilities, and reviews of the available flip phones and other simplicity-oriented devices.…
Michigan, Las Vegas, and Willa Cather
“George Scialabba’s Prejudice for Progress.” Come for Sam Adler-Bell’s summary of Scialabba’s appraisal of modernity, stay for his paean to the way Scialabba models what it means to be an…
Off the Beaten Path with County Highway
County Highway is not county-specific. It’s for all of America outside major cities. Well, outside of New York and Los Angeles, for sure. In the second issue, there’s a piece…
Gatsby: Grasping for Transcendence
Gatsby’s character yearns for the infinite; he sparkles with something unusual in the midst of the lavish wealth and chaotic parties of Long Island’s frivolities. Gatsby has “one of those…
Paul Kingsnorth and “The Blizzard of the World”
Paul Kingsnorth delivered the keynote address at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin. With help from a diverse band of fellow travelers including Jewish-Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, Anglo-Catholic social…
No Pawn in the Game: Fannie Lou Hamer, Mississippi, and the Struggle for Human Rights
Like Bob Dylan, Hamer’s life was marked by protest and songs of protest. Her protests, however, grew from her personal experience on the ground in Mississippi. Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk…
Paul Kingsnorth’s Opening Prayer
Paul Kingsnorth, the keynote speaker at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin, begins things with a bonus talk on the power of prayer in a desecrated western world. Highlights …
Only Men
The children’s pastor made his point about who was serious or not when it came to serving God. He could have closed the service, and I would have been out…
Chicken, Water, and Elections
“Oiling the Chicken Machine.” Garth Brown brings his typically thoughtful and balanced perspective to bear on the question of lab grown meat. As he points out, detailing the horrific conditions…
A Right to Imperfection
Lauck is unambiguous that he is engaged in a project of “civic retrieval,” to “remind us of our ideals and how many battles we have already won” and promote the…
Visiting the Mysterious Island of Homeschooling
The overall message is: here, readers, we have discovered a whole new mysterious island filled with these strange savages, previously unexplored. You wouldn’t believe what they’re doing out there! So…
Seeds
These days invasive species in my home are once again in a spiral of negative attention. As usual, the dandelion is ignored, except by children seeing the world as the…
On Writing Oklahoma City
What if you can’t live in the place where your imagination feels at home? What if you can’t ever stay in one place long enough to grow roots? What if…
Chalk, Fungi, and Goldenrod
We’ve posted videos of the conference talks. We’ll also release audio versions via the Brass Spittoon podcast in the coming weeks. “Porch Sittin'.” Nathaniel Marshall gives his recap of the…
Delighting in the Great Possessions
Still, Berry maintains, the particularly Amish ways of working, rejoicing, and relaxing work together to promote the “great possessions” enumerated by Kline in his essays. “The lives of fellow creatures…
Modernity is a Dirty Diaper
Modernity has become permanently liquid; it no longer seeks solid replacements to the pre-modern world but finds greater value in transience, not just of institutions and things, but of human…
Fly Fishing and Henry Bugbee
We can never ossify the world because it is always moving and changing like the river. Yet we can open ourselves to this ever fluctuating movement. This is manifested in…
Decentralism, Byung-Chul Han, and Cemeteries
“‘Living As Humans in A Machine Age’: Reflections on this Year’s Front Porch Republic Conference.” Dixie Dillon Lane reflects on last week’s conference and puts her finger on what unites…
The Smallest of Seeds: A Review of Fragile Neighborhoods
For Kaplan, when comparing two countries and asking why one has succeeded where the other has failed, what matters most is not national policies but “societal dynamics—the strength of the…
Democracies Need Shared Literature
Before we totally condemn the Athenians as selfish, entertainment-addicted bad citizens—which, to be fair, they sometimes (or often?) were, just like us—it is worth considering what such shared democratic spaces…
Feasting with Caitlin Smith Gilson
Caitlin Smith Gilson is a philosopher, theologian, poet, and novelist. I originally contacted her to invite her to come on the podcast to discuss the story and movie “Babette’s Feast.”…
