Region & Place 427
Preserving Local Memory
My grandma didn’t put up a Christmas tree. She didn’t bake pies. And she didn’t make fudge. Her kitchen was silent. I believe it was her way of mourning, not…
DON’T SHOOT THAT MOCKINGBIRD!
Besides, the harshest criticisms of any place come from those who truly love and belong to it.
Membership
We are here, in part, because choices made in big places have worked against rural places and rural people.
Idaho May…
"Would that thou couldst last for aye, Merry, ever merry May" --William D. Gallagher Well, it can't. But herewith my May column from The American Conservative on a contumacious patriot of…
Generations
I sense a gap on FPR between NoNamers and most of the rest.
The Narrows of the Hassayampa
The explosive growth in wilderness-designated land is one of the few modern desert Southwest trends of which I heartily approve. In 1975, Arizona had several hundred thousand acres of designated…
Can Votes Determine whether Ryan Howard is Better than Albert Pujols?
If voting for your favorite baseball player doesn't prove his greatness, does the same lesson apply to your favorite or even your own community?
“Our Town” in The City
On the threshold between two unchosen ways of life - one of commitments, the other of choices. Both give rise to discontents, but ours today makes them a way of…
An Arch Needs Many Stones: A Response to “God’s Economy”
But how can such plural sovereignty be realised under the circumstances of this century? Who will guard the guardians, so to speak? How will the stones of the arch fit…
Hail to the Publican
A friend sent me the other day two issues of a little journal called The Publican of Philadelphia. Since I am forever worried that the Porch's ongoing what-to-do conversation gravitates…
Local History
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. It's been seventy years since John Steuart Curry unveiled his masterpiece murals on the walls of the Kansas State House. Their anarchic depiction of my home land…
On the Road Again
. . . we rediscovered the meaning of Place. Limits. Liberty.
It’s the Land, Stupid
I'll take the old gal with a few well-earned wrinkles that fit soft and snug like a favorite glove. It's the land, stupid, and boy is she a thing of…
Place, Limits, Liberty (In That Order)
Harvey Mansfield and William Galston disagree about liberty; from the perspective that insists place empowers liberty, Galston has it right.
Constitutional Kookiness
For years, two-faced Republican demagogues have served up phony-baloney about how much they love little country churches, Norman Rockwell paintings, and old-fashioned American life, even while they were simultaneously encouraging…
Friendship with New England Reserve
As the half-savage neighbor in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Blood and Tobacco: Robert Penn Warren’s “Night Rider”
Men cut off from their origins and alienated from their selves become desperate, and desperate men do desperate deeds.
From Olive Trees to Overcapacity
A homogeneous global consumer culture flattens its victims. And, perhaps in the same vein, our meanderings around the dying furniture capital of Yecla turned up nothing: virtually everything on display…
The Roots of Originality
It is only our own town or neighborhood that is specific enough, and someday knowable enough, to enable a capable writer's imagination to imagine it clear and whole.
The Book You Should Read This Year
Claremont, CA. They call it the “Superman Syndrome.” People who use methamphetamine often believe that they are capable of doing impossible things. Like flying. Or walking through walls. Or earning…
After the Econolypse
Hamilton, Ontario. When remembering a family-owned grocery store in rural Virginia, a first image comes to mind, even though I did not actually witness it. This is my boss, a…