Good Job, Bruce!
A retirement dinner party for an Ivy League professor follows certain conventions. It begins with the cocktail hour where guests renew old and make new...
Life Under Compulsion: From Schoolhouse to School Bus
“Imagine,” said my friend, “how long it takes the bus to go from Little Anse,” a village at the extreme end of the island...
The Stories We Tell…
Philadelphia, PA. If you have read just one of Wendell Berry’s novels or short stories, then you have glimpsed this Kentucky farmer’s love for family,...
A Sheeshah Pipe for the Porch?
I came to Cairo to get a better sense of the prospects for such a global conversation. If the battle over values is likely to play out globally in this century, how open are we to our natural allies?
Against Rationalism, Idealism, and Abstraction
Part II in an ongoing series, Localism and the Universal Church. Read Part I here.
Where the traditionalist position I have sketched appears weakest is...
Practicing the Discipline of Place
My "Place" (Photo by AMS)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. If you think I'm reprinting yet another old essay because I'm too lazy or beset to keep...
Getting the Garden Going, One Baby-Step at a Time
This academic year Friends University found itself wondering what to do with a plot of land, directly beside and behind some student dormitories. Through...
The College and the Community: A Strange Saga in Tallahassee
As President John Thrasher alienates Florida State University from segments of the broader Tallahassee, Florida community, a lesson from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is worth considering.
“You Ever Get Back There Any More?”
Down on the Square (as we East Texas natives refer to the downtown in Henderson, pop. 11,000), I make a visit to the backroom...