The Editors
Articles by The Editors
Elmer Kelton, RIP
BURNED--OVER DISTRICT, NY---Elmer Kelton, the superb Texas novelist, died Saturday. In 2006 I visited Mr. Kelton in his San Angelo home; herewith, via the late American Enterprise, the result: Elmer…
The Real Death Panels
From the indispensable Joe Bageant: "Dottie is doping out the Romney [WV] medical establishment for me: 'These Indians or Pakis or whatever they are run the hospital like it was…
Beewilderment
Henry County, Kentucky. When the massive dieoffs of commercial bees first became evident a little less than three years ago, what is now called Colony Collapse Disorder was national news. …
Road Rage
For readers tuning into the comments sections of FPR (where some of our best material lies), there was an extremely interesting and instructive discussion of the cost, and more generally…
Closing the Circle: An Economy of Values, and Where to Look for It
It is no surprise that many of us connected with FPR welcomed the release in mid July of Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. As John Médaille and…
Making (a Virtue of) Vice
Yet more news from the hustings: a growing number of people are growing their own tobacco for their own consumption. Bully for them - depriving the beast of "sin taxes"…
Warren Oates, Constitutional Anarchist
From The American Conservative---you really should subscribe, you know---my piece (www.amconmag.com/article/2009/sep/01/00050/) on the great Kentucky actor Warren Oates.
Big Secrets
Claremont, CA. Yesterday I was walking past the post office in my latte-liberal, bohemian-bourgeois town, when I saw a picture of President Obama made up to look like Hitler.…
How Many Evangelicals Does it Take to Comment on an Encyclical?
68 apparently. I had to laugh when I saw this. I recognize many of them as my interlocutors from the old New Pantagruel days. And if I learned anything, it…
A Short History
Posted originally as a comment to Patrick Deneen's "Road Rage" (and re-posted here at his insistence): The State of Oregon Highway Comm. had a wonderful engineer named Conde McCullough who…
Pomo’s vs. Fropo’s Revisited
I will admit that I did not keep up with all of the discussion that ensued from various blogs that tried to discern the differences between folks that write over…
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time in the countryside. He observed that…
Philip Bess’s Pizza
Last week, Philip Bess - the noted Notre Dame University scholar of architecture - delivered a lecture in Washington under the auspice of the group "Conservatism on Tap." Bess's lecture…
Can Health Care Be Local?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Over the past couple of weeks, I've written a few things on the current debate over health care reform. A couple of smart…
Advice For Up-And-Comers
Claremont, CA. I spoke last week at the New Jersey Governor’s School for Public Issues, a (mostly) state-funded summer program for civic-minded students about to enter their senior year in…
Hospitality and the Hopi: Fragmentation and Hope
“Pray for the foothills,/goatherds and windmills/and satellite dishes” – Mark Heard Cincinnati, OH. A comment on my recent post on Hopi hospitality referred to “…satellite dishes on the stone and…
How We Solve Problems in Small Town America
I'm still on my summer blogging hiatus, but this artifact was too good to pass up. Seen at local post office this afternoon.
Class Project
Recently, a friend who is conservative asked me: "What should be the next great project for conservatism?" I mulled this for a bit, and then the conversation quickly passed…
B.S. Degree
College graduates are certainly learning something - all that resume padding isn't worth a bucket of spit when all the imaginary jobs that kept people busy moving around notional financial…
“On the Grid”: When Electricity (and Other Things) Came to the Countryside
“Come in and look,” Quintín urged me, as he disappeared with a shuffle through the low doorway in his adobe house. I got up from the wooden bench on which…
Lookin’ Out My Back Door; Or Sounds From Boo Radley’s Porch
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---Caleb has proposed this beautiful rendition of “Our Town” by Iris DeMent as the Front Porch theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FikZwgj89HI (Anyone not moved by it is either dead or,…
Jesse Walker, No Depressor
Jesse Walker, managing editor of Reason, is one of my favorite writers on matters cultural and political. His fugitive essays for No Depression, the magazine of American music, have just been collected…
On Feeling “Forgotten”: Agrarian Aspirations in the Andes
“The more things change, the more they remain the same.” The villagers of Pomatambo, Ayacucho, Peru, did not coin the phrase, though it has captured their lives with eerie precision…
Nomen est Omen
Henry County, Kentucky. If your name is your fate, what does the future hold for Rylynn Shikaela Novaleigh? There she is in the paper, age one, wrapped in the…