Articles 356
In Pursuit of Jimmie Ricker’s Farm
It was hard to resist. John Harrigan’s portrait of Great North Woods stump farmer Jimmie Ricker in our local newspaper compelled me to drive two hundred miles north from Manchester,…
Losing (Some of) the Local Commons
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] The annual Prairie Festival at The Land Institute just outside Salina, KS, was held two months ago, but it's been much on my mind for…
Cultivating the Candy Roaster: An Extensive Pleasure
In the spring of this year, some students and I created a modest Heritage Garden—420 square feet of raised beds built from two-by-twelves and filled with a topsoil and compost…
The Local Game
The baseball season has ended. For fans just about everywhere outside of Boston, this will signal either melancholy or relief. Or possibly disgust. Melancholy if your season ended unsatisfactorily, relief…
What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think of…
We Need a lot More than Romance
When I came across John Hockenberry’s essay, “Exile,” in the October edition of Harper’s Magazine, I had never heard of him. I still know little about him, though a simple Wikipedia glance…
Walking in a Dead Man’s Shoes
A woman in another kind of grief uttered the terrible “should have been.”
Live like a Tree
I am an unlikely localist. My life is a product of globalization. My mother’s side of the family is from Singapore, China, and India, linked to each other through the…
Dirt Thick with Known Dead
While wandering in a used bookstore this summer, I picked up Donald Hall’s String Too Short to be Saved. I enjoyed Hall’s stories about his grandparents’ farm (the book’s title…
Dear Eugene
One of my heroes of the faith is dead. Eugene Peterson experienced death, but certainly not its sting, as he uttered his final words, “Let’s go,” on Monday, October 22.…
Food and “the job of getting it there”
In Charles Frazier’s 1997 novel Cold Mountain, a minister’s daughter decides after her father’s death to remain on their western North Carolina farm, rather than return to the genteel life…
The Cornhusker Berryian: Ben Sasse’s Argument for Rootedness
It was said of the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) that he had written more books than most senators had read. Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) seems to aspire to…
Leo Durocher: The All-American Contradiction
The coming of October, and of the World Series as culmination, invites reflection on yet another season in which the home run (and the strikeout) became the centerpiece of the…
To Make Housing Affordable, Act Locally
Even if you spend only a fraction of your day monitoring the news, you’ve probably caught wind of the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Disproportionately affecting both the poor and young…
Absurd Wisdom: An Apology for Euthyphro
“Not many of you are wise, as men account wisdom…God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise.” (1 Cor. 1:26-27) The Philosopher and the Theologian The…
Liberated for What
This piece is adapted slightly from a speech given at Spring Arbor University in Michigan at September's FPR Conference. The sexual revolution as we understand it today was not originally…
On Pigeons
Two autumns ago you couldn’t take a dozen steps without tripping over the decapitated corpse of a pigeon. There’d be one lying on the hard packed gravel of the driveway…
Thinking and Writing in ¾ Time: A Few Thoughts on Jimmy Buffett
There are many surprising things about getting older. As I sit on the cusp of my late thirties, staring at that blinking cultural landmark a few years down the road,…
The Local Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands at the fore of figures of the Christian past who loom large over political theology and religious activism today. The German pastor and theologian’s life elevates his…
Mama Gets a Bugle
It is a mark of the middle class to maintain a low-grade prowl on eBay or Craigslist for some odd thing. My prowl was for a bugle. The desire was…
On the Beat in the City of Hospitality
On my way to work at the local weekly newspaper, driving down East Mansion Street and then West Michigan Avenue in downtown Marshall, I pass three people I know. One…
Notes on Nike
An honest question: why was Zoolander III: Kendall Jenner and Pepsi Notice Some Serious Issues laughed into shameful corners of the internet immediately while Colin Kaepernick’s recent advertisement with Nike,…
Nationalism Against Imperialism
“For centuries, the politics of Western nations have been characterized by a struggle between two antithetical vision of world order: an order of free and independent nations, each pursuing the…