Articles 355
Urban Questions (and Responses) for Krugman
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Over a month ago, Paul Krugman used his space at The New York Times to ask "what, in the modern economy, are small cities even…
Updating the Porch
The noise you are hearing is the furniture moving on the porch. You may have already noticed the redesigned site. Jeff Bilbro has taken the helm as Editor-in-Chief, replacing Jeff…
Reviving the Conversation on the Porch
I’m honored and excited to be joining the Front Porch Republic in a more official capacity and taking over the editorial duties for this site. When I stumbled across FPR…
Catalonia Could Happen Here
As a scholar of Regional and Place Studies and a historian of secessionist movements I believe Catalonia’s brand of separatism could come to the United States, and sooner than Americans…
Pornified Puritans and the Logic of Pornography
Hidden Springs Lane Al Franken is only the latest prominent man to be discovered as a lecherous cad if not an outright sexual predator. His behavior toward Leeann Tweeden when…
A Call for a Politically Inclusive Classroom
Teaching Tolerance in a Time of Trump sounds like a short-course a firebrand professor might offer, though I mean it in a more comprehensive way than one might imagine. While…
A Few Favorable Words About Jud Heathcote
I understood immediately why Skiles was a Spartan and I was not.
Good Night, Sweet Babe Magnet
It's as if two men are talking fondly about a woman both of them were once married to.
As North Korea Goes Nuclear Far East Ambassadors Must Speak Up
I lived much of my adult life under Terry Branstad’s multiple tenures as governor of Iowa, and I think he did a “pretty fair job,” as farm families are wont…
And Then Came the Chickens, Part Two: A Dispatch from Dumb-Ass Acres
“Bawk-bawk be-gehk!” she cries, and I know just where she’s coming from.
Breaking Through the Screen Door: The Jayhawks’ Hollywood Town Hall, Twenty-Five Years Later
A couple of years ago my wife had a minor accident, the kind that results in an older car being mysteriously “totaled.” Before the man came to ferry our 2005…
To Bail or not to Bail
Recently David Brooks posted a New York Times op-ed lamenting an increase in “bailing,” which he defines as “flaking” on social commitments. The title of the article was “The…
The Dryers are Coming! The Dryers are Coming!
South Korea lives on the cutting edge of technology -- just ask the young smart-phone zombies that slowly roam the campus where I teach. On second thought, better to send…
Mr. Sillypants Goes to Washington
In a folder of papers at my desk there are reminders of things to do sometime, although they aren’t urgent. Waiting to be filed is a copy of Billy Collin’s…
On Place, Permanence, and Microbrews
“It is a pleasure to carry out one’s duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one’s name on it certifying,…
And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch
Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
A Place Called Home – Even When You’re Young
Since posting "A Place Called Home" we have learned of the passing of Otto Warmbier. Just as home is the place where absence is felt most durably, so home is…
Trump: America’s Father-in-Chief?
Donald Trump has been called many things in the press in the first six months of his presidency, yet the media have thus far missed his most overlooked calling card:…
On Father’s Day (With an Apostrophe)
Grand Rapids, MI Father’s Day is around the corner. I had to look up the term to see if it has an apostrophe. It does, and it has had since…
Peter Lawler: R.I.P.
Peter Augustine Lawler passed away on Tuesday, leaving a significant void not only in the lives of his friends, family, and students, but in the intellectual life of American conservatism…
Shared Governance and Mandatory Training: The New Incoherence
So long as gravity obtains, sawing off the branch you’re sitting on is never a good idea.
Avoiding the Hive
New Directions for Catholic Social and Political Research: Humanity vs. Hyper-Modernity, Guido Preparata, (ed.) Palgrave MacMillan, 319 pages The future is notoriously uncertain but nonetheless, legion have been the prognostications…
Bruce Langhorne, RIP
Bruce Langhorne, best known as the inspiration for Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" but best loved (by me, anyway) for his extraordinary score for Peter Fonda's 1971 acid Western The…
