Ghostly Echoes: A Eulogy
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. October is here, the chill wind blows, leaves are on the ground, so it must be time to talk about ghosts. ...
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,...
Social Injustice
{This column appears in today's Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper. My column is published fortnightly.}
If there is one thing about which we are certain that...
False Economics and Malignant Growth
Patrick Deneen's excellent post this morning on populism, directly invoking Kansas, gives me the occassion to repost a short essay I wrote last year for my...
What Colour Is the Village Green?
Often the politics of the local turns on the “who” as much as the “where.”
Switzerland showed as much very recently. The country enjoys some...
The Vast White Landscape: E.B. White’s “Great Snows” Revisited
Rock Island, IL
A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to...
Going to Bethlehem
Henry County, Kentucky. Most families who celebrate Christmas have their own favorite Christmas traditions. We like to go to Bethlehem.
Bethlehem (Kentucky, six miles from...
It’s the Family, Stupid
Hillsdale,MI. David the King ordered the beautiful Bathsheba to come to him because he could. He also could have her husband killed, and sent...
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.
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 government-subsidized corporations to steamroll Mom & Pop businesses and turn main streets into chain-store strip-malls.