Articles 356
Rethinking the Local vs. Global Divide
In Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime, Bruno Latour provides a challenging but potentially hopeful take on why climate denial continues to be a political force. For him,…
The Crisis of Love in a Global Age
Any longtime reader of Wendell Berry’s work recognizes two of the many animating forces that give his writing its emotional resonance. These two forces, these two genii loci, revolve around Berry’s approach…
Gender is a Social Construct
In Gender, Illich reveals the depth and scope to which capitalist modernity has unsettled family life and relations between men and women in general.
Rock the Block
It is a cloudless July day in Connecticut—the kind of day that keeps people rooted in this place despite its long winters and high taxes. From houses up and down the…
The American Bookstore: A List
Go here to read the first part of this two-part essay on the American Bookstore. Several hours before a home game at the University of Michigan, the owner of a bookstore on a crowded street teeming with…
The American Bookstore: Prologue
Some months ago I stood in a basement bookstore in suburban Maryland and pondered a relic of the 1960s, an artifact of dubious worth to the casual observer which had…
Institutional Renewal
It is hard to see a silver lining in the abuse scandal of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the scarring crisis has given Pope Francis a rare opportunity to initiate meaningful…
Narrating the Tradition of Liberalism’s Anti-Tradition
Criticizing the current liberal order is a popular activity. Authors such as Patrick Deneen, Rod Dreher, D.C. Schindler, Mark Lilla, Johnathan Haidt, and Jordan Peterson have generated significant conversation through…
No Chairlift, No Spandex, No Problem: The Rustic Virtues of X-C Ski
During the fall color tour, we often drive to a ski resort near my home in southwest Michigan. It’s about the only time my family visits the place, which goes…
Monopoly House Rules
I love board games. Truth be told, I am a sucker for games of all types, but there are a number of aspects to playing a board game that simply cannot…
What Groucho Marx Can Teach Us About Liberal Education
The world wearies of defenses of liberal education and the humanities. What cannot be denied is that all over the country the liberal arts are dying out, with students abandoning…
Spirits of Place
John Gatta is the William B. Kenan Jr. Professor of English at Sewanee: The University of the South. He’s the author of several excellent books, including Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion,…
Smiling Prophet of Tape and Glue
If you watch a regional sportscast on TV, or some similar out-of-the-way cable fare, you’ll eventually see a commercial featuring a smiling, chubby man wearing casual clothes and speaking in…
Avoiding “A World Without Women,” or Porches
A common and often valid critique of many families in the homeschooling movement is that, because of a lingering obsession on, and invisible competition with, the thing they are leaving…
Instability and the Noonday Devil
In a lecture on monastic stability delivered at the 2015 Front Porch Republic conference, Benedictine monk Gerard D’Souza noted that the idea of staying in one place for the rest of…
On the Costs and Rewards of Planting Trees
I have just planted two apple trees from what my local nursery calls their “Posterity Collection,” heritage varieties grafted onto a slower-growing but durable and long-lived rootstock so that the trees…
Yellow Vests Run Out of Gas
When asked to share my thoughts on the recent yellow vests protests, I initially demurred, stating that is was simply another case of the French being the French (about benefits)…
Local Identity and Cities In-Between
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] 2018 has been a busy year for those of us who aspire to--or are at least somewhat animated by--localism here in Wichita, KS, the 50th-most…
The Appeal of a Well-Simmered Life
It’s 9 a.m. on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, which seems like a reasonable, civilized time to make apple butter. Yet in my mother-in-law’s farmhouse kitchen, 9 a.m. might as well…
Whose Nostalgia? Which Liberalism? Reflections on “Faith and Democracy in America”
Liberalism can be marked by the gospel and still be a political and cultural dead end. As Ivan Illich argued, corruptio optimi pessima.
Thomas Merton’s Contemplative Politics
Fifty years ago today, Thomas Merton died suddenly during a visit to Thailand. During the past few months, I’ve been thinking about the ways his life and writings speak both…
Can Beauty Bring Us Together?
First, a confession: with the exception, at the age of 18, of a brief flirtation with Barry Goldwater’s presidential candidacy, my politics have leaned decidedly Left. My father, on the other…
When In Gotham . . .
“How does one critique globalism without succumbing to would-be nationalist despots like Bolsonaro or Trump?” This was the earnest and sensible question a friend put to me by email the…
Funding College Graduates to Come Home
Sacred cows exist in almost every industry and sector in America, and the world of philanthropy is no exception. Within the realm of community or place-based philanthropy, one such powerful…