Region & Place 428
The Patron Saint of Place
For several decades now, the business plan of fast-food chains has been to build restaurants with a similar design: a drive through around the back and side, an indoor playground…
California Splits
When a "boomer" hits the Pacific Ocean, how does he redefine starting anew? Here are some suggestions from the West Coast.
The Real Social Network
The other night I saw the end of a life well-lived. I didn’t know him; I just saw his funeral. My bus rolled through the dark night I was riding…
Liberty and Circuits of the Sacred
A few days ago was the first time I heard Chinese being spoken with a heavy Indian accent. Given the tenor of our times, one might expect this to have…
Nature, Labor, and a Goat Named Alcibiades
As I cranked the lever I could watch the forest become pasture. I was using a come-along, a simple winch for tightening wire, to run a new fence. As the…
McClaughry Memoir: The Reagan Years
The following is the fourth installment of John McClaughry’s memoir, Promoting Civil Society Among the Heathen. See the previous chapter here. 7. Ronald Reagan Now let’s backtrack to 1966 and follow…
A Semester of Teaching Sustainability
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] The semester has come to an end here at Friends University, and students are leaving campus for their holiday break. Right now I'm grading, and…
Being Thankful for National Communities and Civil Religion, Sometimes
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] Amongst those Americans who believe that the civic virtues which make both popular government and a fulfilling independence possible are themselves dependent upon, to a…
On Killing (Chickens)
Hidden Springs Lane. Last weekend the deed was done. Having acquired 25 chicks in the spring (they were free) it soon became clear that this was, as they say, a…
Pippin the Porcher: Front Porch Themes Take Center Stage on Broadway
“They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway.” And indeed, what they say is true. Outside of Nevada, there is no flashier street running through these United States than…
The Fate of the Rural Church?
Kilsyth, Ontario Darryl Hart wrote some time ago about the unwillingness of mainline Protestants to serve in rural churches. Employing Wendell Berry, Hart wrote: In his essay, “God and Country,”…
Is There Such a Thing as Private Food?
The following is an excerpt from David E. Gumpert’s Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights (Chelsea Green, 2013) and is reprinted with permission of the publisher. Learn more about…
The War Comes Home
This Friday, June 28, Copperhead, which Ron Maxwell directed from my adaptation of a Harold Frederic novella, opens in about 70 cities. A second wave of openings washes across the…
When Richard Met Barber
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY---“Richard Fenno’s oeuvre is the most important contribution to congressional scholarship during recent generations,” says Yale political scientist David R. Mayhew. Contemporary political science is dominated by quantitative…
The Localist and the Big Box Store
Hidden Springs Lane. Should a localist shop at Home Depot? Or Walmart? The question, as I’ve stated it, should taste slightly off, like milk that is just on the verge…
Place Isn’t Just Geographical
Rod Dreher’s new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, seems to have struck a chord among both sympathizers and critics of Wendell Berry. Ross Douthat, Alan Jacobs, Jake Meador,…
The Night of Susurrant Voices
God didn't put twelve months on the calendar so we could work them all.
On Buying Local Food, And Why
I decided some time ago that I wish to eat as little as possible from the “industrial” food chain; that is to say, I wish to buy little food from…
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 us grew up staring at glowing…
A Prophet of Goodness: Review of Mark T. Mitchell’s The Politics of Gratitude: Scale, Place and Community in a Global Age
At my worst moments, I succumb to thinking that we have become utterly trite, absorbed by ephemera, thin of character, quick but scattered of intellect, weak of will, and just…
A Long Repentance: A Decade of Turning Away from (a Part of) the American Dream
Including “repentance” in this title might lead you to believe that it is a theological reflection of some kind. After all, repentance is a religious word, is it not? And…
Ruthie Leming’s (and Rod Dreher’s) Little Way
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Rod Dreher's 2006 manifesto, Crunchy Cons, was an inspiration (and provocation) to many, on both the left and the right. It wasn't that the book…
U.S. ‘Intervention’ in Syria Unlawful
Proponents of Syria “intervention” did not seem to notice any irony as Secretary of State John Kerry, on the one hand, chastened Iraq for letting Iran use its airspace to…
Eating Local–Or Local Enough
If I earn ten pennies in heaven for being a local food supplier, do I get five for being regional?