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...
The Decline of Middle America and the Problem of Meritocracy
I delivered a version of the following text as a lecture at Augustana College last Tuesday, April 28 (all errors of fact and interpretation...
How Germany Made Us “Conservative”
Wichita, KS. Fifteen years ago, when my wife and I got married, we had a lot of inchoate ideas and aspirations, many of which...
Ohio’s Backyard Scientist
"Would that thou couldst last for aye,
Merry, ever-merry May!"
William D. Gallagher (the forgotten Ohio poet)
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY--The clouds of April have scattered, so look...
Farm Stories: The Flag of Rough Branch
Drilling with the Pitchfork (photo by AMS)
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The call came from the neighbor yesterday at about four in the afternoon. Your cows...
Taking Secession Seriously–At Last
Mt. Pleasant, SC--As little as I wished to make my first post for FPR an overtly political essay on contemporary affairs--I had meant to...
A Call to Arms
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. The review below was first published in the Intercollegiate Review in the fall of 2006. Look Homeward, America was my first...
Obama’s Small Town Values – Not
I posted this piece at What I Saw In America on Friday last; for any readers of both these sites, I apologize for the...
Abraham Lincoln and the Destruction of Place
In case you missed it, 2009 is the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Earlier this week I participated in a roundtable discussion on Lincoln’s...
Walkaway
In addition to frequent searches that lead people to an earlier posting on "monoculture" on my site "What I Saw in America," among the...