Region & Place 430

PHOENIX, ARIZONA. Today is opening day, and how sweet it is. But nine days from now comes the most annoying day on the Major League Baseball schedule, when the league…

OWEN TOWNSHIP, WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILLINOIS: According to one legend, the word Iowa means "Place of the Drowsy Ones" in some extinct Indian tongue. This came to mind yesterday when the…

Henry County, Kentucky. What holds a community together?  Or rather, what holds my community together, as I'll have to leave you to worry about yours?  I think about it some because…

It's not only that the richest people are getting richer; it's the richest places, too. And even within regions -- southern California, say -- rich suburbs have become wealthier and…

Alexandria, VA. For many years now, "environmentalists" have sought to thwart the extension of forms of commerce and economic development that prove destructive of "eco-systems" or threaten the delicate balance…

Mt. Airy, Philadelphia. Pope Benedict has recently gained a bit of credit with world media for emphasizing the urgency of addressing the environmental devastation we have wrought. This (combined with…

Via John Schwenkler, I see that Norman Borlaug has just celebrated his 95th birthday. Borlaug, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the primary architects of modern…

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. Mark Thompson has penned a challenging broadside against skeptics of free trade, including me, and he makes a number of arguments that deserve to be answered. There does…

While the pickings are generally slim, the NYTimes can sometimes reveal a glimmer of localism, at least in the only section worth reading, the "City" section on Sundays. A few…

Alexandria, VA. In a recent column, E.J. Dionne precedes his praise for a new economic populism - anger of the populace directed at economic elites - with a somewhat gratuitous,…

Let this day begin again the change of hogs into people, not the other way around, for today we celebrate again our lives' wedding with the world -- Wendell Berry,…

Wichita, KS President Obama's speech last week on the various hopes and goals his administration has in mind as they address the issue of public education in America gave rise…

  Devon, PA.  Some years ago, early in my graduate student days in South Bend, I was invited to begin an opinion column in the campus newspaper, The Observer.  The…

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY. Via the University Bookman, herewith my introduction to its recent special issue on Regionalism, which featured contributions from Frank Bryan, Kate Dalton, Jeff Cain, Jeremy Beer, Jesse…

He traveled the three miles to the mill 63 times during the 87th harvest of his life, his old International pulling the wagon my uncle filled with beans or corn.…

JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. William Allen White, the noted editorialist of Emporia, once named our shared home country America’s tenth muse—the muse of prophecy. If Kansas is muse, surely one of…

South Bend, IN. Back here, in the city where the St. Joseph River takes her perpetual turn for the worse, my family and I have come to pay our last…

CLAREMONT, CA. We have become homeowners. This week, my husband and I are moving boxes from our latest rental into a house that we may finally call home. It’s a…

JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. In the comments somewhere below, Prof. Fox mentions the regional artist John Steuart Curry. A fitting topic for my first foray into this space, not only because…

We do live in a remarkable age. The last time agrarianism and distributism were taken seriously in America was during the 1930s. The economic crisis of that decade forced people to…

BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY. It’s town meeting day in the once and future republic of Vermont.  Herewith, from the American Conservative, my profile of Frank Bryan, the University of Vermont professor…

PHOENIX, ARIZONA. I don’t think that many reviews have yet appeared, but John Lukacs has just published another memoir, titled Last Rites. Patrick Allitt has an appreciative, but not uncritical,…