The Editors
Articles by The Editors
The Liberal Arts for Loss and Lament
The main posture of a liberal arts education is slowing down, rest, seeing. But if we just train students to only strive, reach, stretch for something more, then suffering will…
Read Not the Times. Read the Eternities: A Review of Reading the Times
When our own churches are divided and bubbled up in their own media worlds, unable to agree on basic “facts” related to current events, you know its time to take…
Erik Bootsma On Traditional Architecture
My guest is Erik Bootsma a classical architect who specializes in ecclesiastical architecture. Erik was trained at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, which focuses on traditional forms…
Paul Kingsnorth and the Truer Path of Worship
A short review cannot do justice to the range of reasons visitors to the Porch should read Kingsnorth’s three novels, so I’ll begin simply by saying: Read them. These are…
I’m Over the American Homer
I’m not canceling Whitman. But my own enthusiasm for his poetry is waning. The poet whose daring versification and daring lifestyle were once seen as the epitome of counter-culture has…
The Paradox of American Places
Daniel Elazar was emphatic that a “renewed sense of localism” was essential to America’s future. For Americans, this means renewed intentionality about our local communities, not merely living in one…
Hemingway, All Too Human
The new things we learn about Ernest Hemingway in this documentary not only make him more interesting; they make his writing more remarkable.
Self-Government Starts at the Front Porch
Rugged individualists need not be atomists; and there are compelling reasons why even Enlightenment liberals should be front porch republicans.
Pedro Mendes with Ten Garments Every Man Should Own
My guest is Canadian menswear writer and broadcaster Pedro Mendes who operates the website The Hogtown Rake. I have followed Pedro for years on Instagram and also very much enjoyed…
Larry McMurtry: Myth Killer, Myth Keeper
Whether he takes us to the Texas frontier or to 1970s Houston, his prose never gets in the way of his story. He moves ahead with the precision and simplicity…
Teaching Banned Books: Huck Finn
The censorship of slavery no longer dictates Huck’s morality. Unlike Tom, Huck has begun to question his society’s standards, to weigh and consider what is just and right, and I…
Calvino’s Leonia and the Weight of History
The conservationist recognizes that the society we live in, as much as the natural world we live in, was given to us as a gift with the demand that we…
Larry McMurtry and Wendell Berry at the Dairy Queen
McMurtry couldn’t quite set the Bowie knife to the scalp of the Western like Cormac McCarthy did the same year, maybe because he knew those people weren’t grotesque caricatures; they…
Communitarianism, Left and Right
Populism can in fact be seen as being precisely a reassertion of democracy against the anti-democratic tendencies of managerial, technocratic elites.
Cesar’s Circus
The purpose of politics is to accrue power. Chavez knew this reality, and perhaps his funeral was his last, best opportunity to control the stage and direct the players.
Should We Begin To Reconnect?
Add the past year on to this already disturbing trend, and such destructive realities have only been further exacerbated. The need for human sociality is not a deficiency, nor is…
Uprooted with Grace Olmstead
My guest this episode is Grace Olmstead. Grace has done excellent work for several years on issues of localism, just the sort of thing we like to talk about on…
The Professor and the Madman: Cancel Culture, Consequences, and Restorative Justice
Our society may sometimes be divided on how to define right and wrong, but that has not dampened enthusiasm for identifying wrongdoing.
Atticus, Scout, and the Gift of Children: On Reading To Kill a Mockingbird with my Daughter in 2020
This is the humbling gift our children offer. If we seek to shape their character, at some point in the journey we’ll find ourselves backed into a corner, faced with…
John de Graaf, Affluenza, and Stewart Udall
Summary Filmmaker John de Graaf pulls up a chair to discuss his 1997 documentary Affluenza; a forthcoming project on Arizona politician and JFK/LBJ’s Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; the…
Pigs and Hollies and Swamps, Oh My!: Corrymeela Ranch, Limestone County, Texas
Corrymeela is a dreamscape, a landscape that I marvel at every time I go out there. If conservation consists of loving something—a tract of land, a garden, a wood—then my…
My Mask, My Choice
Unfortunately, much of what is currently driving the discussion is not reason nor compassion but anger.
Grace Olmstead’s Uprooted Idaho, and My Own
Uprooted is partly a memoir of her extended family, partly a paean to a way of life that is both dying and which she never really understood while she grew…
Farmers, Physiologists, and Daylight Saving
That advocates of year-round DST persist says something about the evolution of American agriculture and how out of touch we collectively have become with the intractable pulse of nature.