Region & Place 428
Peer Lending and the Problem of Credit
This article is reprinted with permission from The Philanthropic Enterprise and its Trends in Social Innovation project. Eleven years ago, Bruno Rivas left Mexico City to make a better living…
Lessons on Limits from the Cougar Prophet
If a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, I took my prescription of limits and localism with a spoon full of pretty sweet sugar indeed. About 20…
Leaving Washington
Notre Dame, IN. It was on the virtual “pages” of the Front Porch Republic that I announced last February that I was leaving Georgetown University, in Washington D.C., to accept a…
Life Under Compulsion
In 1940, when the Nazis attacked their supposed racial kinfolk in Norway and set up a puppet government under the odious Quisling, the novelist Sigrid Undset fled to the countryside…
Take Me Home
This excerpt is taken from Eric Miller's new book: Glimpses of Another Land: Political Hopes, Spiritual Longings. The Penn State University geographer Wilbur Zelinsky believes something exists called the “Pennsylvania Culture…
Hospitality at a Fractured Table
“It sure is hard to have people over to dinner these days,” the food writer lamented, at a talk I attended the other week. She told a sorry tale of…
How to be a Localist Anywhere
Maybe your neighborhood doesn’t have front porches or sidewalks or a farmer’s market or anywhere to shop except Target. Maybe despite the supposed modern hegemony of freedom and mobility, you…
Town Fabric and Placemaking
This excerpt is the second in a three-part series from Eric Jacobsen’s book, The Space Between. Read Part I here. Town Fabric and Placemaking The built environment plays an important…
Senior Moment
If Virginia is for lovers (what an odd campaign that was), Michigan should be for duffers. I understand why some FroPo's may object to the sport alleged to spoil a…
The View From Your Front Porch
Olathe, Kansas -- On Saturday I looked back from my front porch, my walk having been cut short by a soft rain. As you can see, my grass and that…
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 precisely where it speaks most…
The Problem of Place
Part I in an ongoing series, Localism and the Universal Church. Devon, PA. Several times during the last couple years, the FPR comment boxes have received protests against the supposed “placelessness”…
America, One Minor League Ballpark at a Time
Being a report on a journey whereupon I dragged my wife to see seven minor league baseball games in seven days, as well as the National Baseball Hall of Fame,…
Scotch on the Bruce
Owen Sound, ONT The Bruce Peninsula extends like a claw off Southern Ontario’s main land mass into the Great Lakes basin. Forming a long arc with Manitoulin Island, the Bruce…
The View From Your Front Porch
Bethune, S.C. -- I am told there used to be a small dairy farm of less than 50 cows just a quarter-mile down the road from where we stay. If…
Sheep in the Parlor
These are good days for those residing in old homes with wide front porches and easy access to quaint Main Street shopping. After all, trends in urban design seem to…
Romney Photo
I received my official photo of Mitt Romney in the mail today. It came from the Republican National Committee. It shows Governor Romney standing before an unpainted barn, an American…
The View From Your Front Porch
Anaheim, Calif. - Nestled between busy thoroughfares dotted with low-slung motels, palm readers, and bail bondsmen, around the corner from the Taqueria and the Clinica Medica del Sagrado Corazon, one…
A Footloose Spring Day
On a gorgeous April Wednesday I am filling in as substitute homeschool teacher. We do arithmetic; we do a language lesson about adverbs and Emily Dickinson. Then—did I mention the…
The Flaw in Jefferson’s Idea of Ward Republics
Thomas Jefferson’s agrarianism has long been vulnerable to attack by unsympathetic critics. Given that Jefferson ultimately banks on virtue rather than folly, this is of course to be expected; but…
You Have Thought Up the Wrong World
In the spring of 1994 my grandmother chose to go off dialysis. Four days later, she was dead. I still remember my parents waking me up in the middle of…
Creative Destruction and its Benefits, China-Style
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A few weeks ago I was visited by a fellow Wichita resident who was thinking about getting into politics. We talked for a while about…
Flipping the Woolly Bugger
Finding myself 2000 miles from Montana but with a couple of boys who want to go fishing, we ventured into the brown waters of the Shenandoah River. This is, according…
Why We Consent to the Wholesale Destruction of Good Land
Harrison County, Ohio. After I first moved to Harrison County, my smaller children used to beg that we drive home after excursions via a little-used road that passes through a…