Articles Archive
Hard Times, Landscape, and Memory
The memory of pain has the power to protect our joy. The land, the place, the names, the people; these are what connect us to today and to every past…
Os Guinness & The Great Quest
My guest is Os Guinness, long a resident of the Washington, D.C. area, Guinness was born in China and educated at Oxford. He is a prolific author, most recently of…
The Coming Cow Wars: Why Raising Cows is a Revolutionary Act
To nurture small-scale local agriculture is to oppose the Maoist, Stalinesque, Hitlerian, Huxlian, Schwabian, Gatesian push to monopolize global food production. My cows plod the Underground. And I plod along…
Wyrd Winter Wondered Worlds
Parker’s Winters in the World is an education fit for the Humanities and lay person who wishes to expand upon what it means to exist as humans in a world…
Cancel War Stories
People often want to ignore the complexity of that process, downplay how often interests conflict, and avoid confrontation. In this essay, I suggest we throw ourselves into the mess and…
Surveillance, Hope, and Poetry
“Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech to Expand Global Surveillance.” A team of AP reporters—Garance Burke, Josef Federman, Huizhong Wu, Krutika Pathi and Rod McGuirk—detail how COVID surveillance technologies are being…
The Power of Place: TrueSouth
As populations and employments shift, the South reflects transitions affecting the nation as a whole. Wherever we are, the place around us is changing. Yet it also has a history…
Community Greening in The Lord of the Rings: Samwise Gamgee and the Power of Local Care
J. R. R. Tolkien imagined a society characterized by people who care for one another and their natural spaces, cultivating human and ecological flourishing in their communities.
House Calls, Handicraft, and the Human Community
The reason I lament the loss of home visits is because in the doctor’s journey to see the patient as a person (which is essential to the therapeutic relationship) the…
Rummaging the Word Hord
In order to reconcile competing and hostile cultures in our current, chaotic milieu, it is necessary to forge a politics of honesty and integrity. As hinted by The Wordhord’s emphasis…
Mary Bailey, Francis Bacon, and San Francisco
“Generations.” Plough’s new issue is out, and while I’m waiting to read it until my physical copy shows up, Peter Mommsen’s opening editorial, probing the yearning for roots and the…
Combatting the Christmas-Industrial-Complex
One can have a very merry Christmas with great simplicity. And maybe, thinking of charity toward our less fortunate neighbors, modeling simplicity has its virtues.
Fighting Loneliness in the Northern Virginia Swamps
The happiest boomers I know love nothing more than talking with their old friends about their new grandchildren. So, my holiday recipe for fighting loneliness is lots of face-to-face talking–with…
After Virtual: Chris Arnade
Chris Arnade, the keynote speaker at the After Virtual conference, has traded global finance for skid row photography. Chris discusses his journey from Wall Street board rooms to a booth…
All the Ways You Can Stay
So leave if you must, but perhaps not today. Stop and consider all the ways you can stay.
Monson, Maine’s Fascinating Story: A Review of Here & Everywhere Else
Manchester, NH. The prospect of moving from our little cottage in New Hampshire causes me great pain. Why? Because I am a creature of place and my surroundings, the people,…
Luddite Teens, George MacDonald, and The Waste Land
“I’m a Stranger Here Myself.” FPR contributor Brian Kaller has a moving essay on returning to his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri for a few weeks this summer after being away…
Meaningless Manchester: Do Provincial Cities Exist?
It is meant to reference, to supplement, but also to circumvent. Manchester doesn’t do smog or spinning jennies anymore. It’s a friendly city. Come on in.
A is for Alligator
But the promise of the coming of the Messiah is that all these animals will be changed from enemies of the human race into its friends, or at least comfortable…
A Christian Critique and the Neoliberal Future: A Review of Naming Neoliberalism
Clapp’s ambitious study attempts a great deal within a comparatively brief compass. Unfortunately, some topics suffer as a result...How can one best understand the tension between individual moral responsibility (rooted…
Why I Wish I Didn’t Have a Smartphone and Computer (But Probably Won’t Give Them Up)
We can agree that many technological “advances” have objectively done more harm than good, in terms of the human condition as well as the Earth, and that we face a…
Snowflakes, Wallace Stegner, and Brokenism
“No Snowflakes are the Same. These Stunning Close-up Photos are Proof.” Amudalat Ajasa explains how Jason Persoff captures amazing images of snowflakes and showcases some of his photos. If you’re…
No Justice, No Peace? René Girard and Endless Rivalries
The rivalry we’re experiencing goes deeper than symptoms, political principles, and even the need for responsive, wise leaders. Indeed, it may bypass principles and wisdom altogether. But to explain it,…
The Census Taker in a Church Pew
It is a trouble that visits us all: our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but…