Articles Archive

“Watch the Great Fall.” Paul Kingsnorth acknowledges his own tendencies toward nostalgia and draws on some fine poets to articulate the proper posture toward decline: “The theologies of Zen, Orthodoxy,…

Kevin Gutzman is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University. He has published half a dozen books on Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitution. His latest book is The Jeffersonians.…

Any reformation requires a standard. How else could you measure progress? The standard of reviving classical learning should plainly include those revered authors who inspired and contributed to that tradition.

The After Virtual conference podcast series closes with a focus on civics and cemeteries.  Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism, talks on, well, plutocrats and socialism (plus the importance of…

I guess that paradox is what intrigues me about Carry and Dale’s differing personal constitutions and methodologies. I see them appealing to all of us in different ways—whether we have…

I am not now lamenting my station, which is a kind of existential loneliness, though at times I do. I’m putting it down in writing because I know for certain…

How else does their work inspire you to think differently about your own relationship to your own places? Take action in your own property, if you have it, and in…

“Ronald Blythe Obituary.” Patrick Barkham remembers a great localist writer: “Never out of print and read and studied around the world, Akenfield made Blythe famous and perhaps overshadowed the many…

By contrast, developing skill through direct contact with nature increases our confidence, efficacy, and even patience. Although fry cooks have a shorter learning curve than motorcycle mechanics or hockey players,…

Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth with both a traditionally trained OB/GYN and with midwives, the philosophical differences are abundantly clear.

Being a teacher is a demanding job, whether in a college, school, or home setting. It requires tremendous energy, responsiveness, and mental flexibility. It requires that you, the teacher, also…

Though the metaphor sounds alarmist, an unimaginable tsunami is barreling down on a complacent world. We may have time to adjust, who knows?

I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires.

My guest is Raj Bhakta. Raj is a true practitioner of the art of cultural debris. From founding one of the first premium whiskey brands, Whistle Pig—based out of Vermont,…

Accompanying the poor or inhabiting their number, the honest among us recognize our own fundamental impoverishment. Bernanos, a father and husband who long depended on others for sustenance, inhabited the…

The reader may be none the wiser regarding the definition of fascism, but this book affords a wisdom and moderation of sorts all the same, one that stems from the…

Changing the phrase “field work” to “practicum” is, without more comprehensive action, a perfect illustration of cheap grace. It costs USC nothing more than some online eye-rolling to do.

What keeps me on one side rather than the other is my belief that if we had been living more fully in that real world, a lot of what we…

To know a particular hometown, with its triumphs and tragedies, its gains and losses, its names and namesakes, its heroes and eccentrics, its myths and peculiarities, its landmarks and symbols,…

Nature is never pure in these poems; it is always responding to human care or lack-of-care, commodified, and, indeed, turned into a symbol by the poet herself. Emerson doesn't hide…

The penultimate session from the FPR conference After Virtual:  The Art of Recovering Lost Goods addresses health.  Philosopher Adam Smith from the University of Dubuque and medical doctor Brian Volck,…

We taste myth when we read Piranesi, because in the story, like in Barfield’s exploration of how the meaning of words changes over time, we are taken out of our…

Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the…

I’m helping to lead a study abroad trip in Rome for the next couple of weeks, so the Water Dipper will be on hiatus. But I plan to return at…