Articles Archive
AP Classes, Vertical Farming, and Surf Localism
“The College Board’s Hollow Vision.” Annie Abrams draws attention to the College Board’s self-serving tactics and bureaucratic approach to pedagogy. AP classes really aren’t equivalent to a good college course:…
Learning through Language: Education and Electronic Media
The best educators (and the best educational institutions) will neither embrace nor eschew the electronic technologies that commercial forces wish to prevail in higher education; rather they will assess each…
Cornmeal and Butter: On the Significance of Temperature
At all hours of the day and night in the Mannon house, you’ll find butter in its designated dish on the dinner table and cornmeal in the fridge. I hold…
Postcards from the Edge: the State of Education in the State of Florida
We do not need crusades for or against “wokeness”—we need people to read actual legislation and weigh in on it. We do not need centralized authorities to make sweeping, political…
What Passes and What Remains: A Review of Pappyland
While we can’t forever capture in amber all that passes through time, what we can do is hope for the Resurrection and leave mementos of ourselves for those that follow.
Live Trees and Dead Wood in the Tropics
A tended garden inevitably involves some choices, as well as planning which tree species will fruit better with more sunshine.
Wisdom Crieth Without: Features of an Inspirational Speech
We speak to connect with ideas and with the Divine. Of all the speeches I have heard in-person and not in a movie, or play, recording, or manuscript, a few…
The Borough Playground
It’s children that make the neighborhood, and when children are outdoors, you’ll want porches in the front of your houses, so that you can see the streets where they often…
Hedgerows, Bird Flu, and Truckers
“Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyone’s Bracing for Apocalypse.” James Pogue goes to the American West to investigate how opposition to globalism…
When Work Disappears: A Review of The Other Side of Prospect
Certainly there is a need for a national conversation and national solutions... But reading The Other Side of Prospect, one is left with the sense that the ultimate authors of…
Ripples of Grace in Works of Mercy
Thomas’s novel suggests that those who would answer these difficult vocations well must learn to look through the pain and see the light shining through.
I Wish I Were A Mountain Goat: Lessons From Harpers Ferry
We should not reject the good fruits of our modern era, but let us also not neglect the good it does young bodies and minds to run up and down…
Holly Ordway & Sharing the Gospel Through Literature
Holly Ordway is the first returning guest on Cultural Debris. Holly and I discuss her most recent book Tales of Faith: A Guide to Sharing the Gospel Through Literature. Holly…
Who is America For? A Review of Cheap Land Colorado
eading Cheap Land Colorado makes you wonder how we can make more space for human flourishing among the poor and on the edges of society? Conover’s approach to the San…
Wild Christianity, Trains, and Chatbots
“A Wild Christianity.” Paul Kingsnorth considers what we can learn from the cave Christians and their rich legacy: “In a time when the temptation is always toward culture war rather…
Devotion to Whole Education: Booker T. Washington
I think, I know, that Washington exemplified a whole-hearted devotion to his students. He was concerned, as I am, to educate the whole person of the student, not merely to…
Making a Home in my Hometown
As I learn how to be a sticker, I hope to continually see the beauty of Battle Creek, no matter its faults. I want to persist in finding the good…
Education as Pilgrimage
"We seem to be born homesick, and that homesickness is meant to lead us into a life of pilgrimage.” Walker Percy Black Mountain, NC. Where are you going? At its…
A Dictionary of Dumb Ideas: Tradition vs. Convention
We should aim to conserve what is deepest and true, not just what happens to have immediately preceded the present. It should be the conservative’s task to reconnect the manner…
Slime, Memorization, and Forests
“Creatures That Don’t Conform.” You don’t have to agree with Lucy Jones’s politics or philosophy to share her amazement at slime mold (and don’t miss Barry Webb’s photographs): “They can…
After the Second Cheer: A Review of Two Cheers for Politics
Purdy has a palpable affection for what he calls “the preservative work of being together.” Beginning again from that affection might allow Purdy and his readers to find a fuller…
The Power of Place: Wildsam Field Guides
The success of Wildsam is a reminder that many people want to experience the real. Every day we are marketed generic and homogenous products and destinations, but there is an…
Dana Gioia’s Bright Twilight
Out on the wrinkled sea, the high notes come shimmering over the cold waves, and 72-year-old Dana Gioia says, “Meet me at the Lighthouse.”
What I Learned in Grad School
Temperamentally and vocationally, I was in the wrong place. Yet I don’t regret a single day I spent there—not only because I met my wife, but because I learned to…
