Roots Along the River
Historically, the locals have called Pompaples, Switzerland the “milieu du monde.” Not to be confused as a claim about its importance as a cultural...
Horse Burgers and the Lives of Others
If you could boil our global problems down to seven words, they might be these: we don’t see where stuff comes from. Most of...
A Note on Immigration
South Bend, IN. Back here, in the city where the St. Joseph River takes her perpetual turn for the worse, my family and I...
Tocqueville on the Shores of Titicaca
Amid Alexis de Tocqueville’s writings on revolution in France, there is a passage that rings true for those of us who have spent time...
Creative Destruction and its Benefits, China-Style
A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while...
Sources of Order: Rooted Cosmopolitanism and the Origins of City Life
What follows is an expanded version of a talk originally given at the 2016 Front Porch Republic Conference at Notre Dame, where Susannah Black...
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...
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...
And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch
Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
The Founding Gardeners
I’ve just finished Andrea Wulf’s beguiling book entitled “ Founding Gardeners, The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation”. Published this...