The Water Dipper

The Humanities, Baseball, and Hunting

“Simone Weil’s Deeper Grace.” Scott Beauchamp explains why Simone Weil is such a necessary thinker for us to listen to. Keep an eye out...

Localism, Trade Wars, and Teaching

“Restoring Localism.” Joel Kotkin claims that if there’s one thing both conservatives and progressives should be able to agree on, it is the need...

A Localist Revolution, Aldo Leopold’s Conservatism, and Public Intellectuals

“The Localist Revolution.” David Brooks writes in defense of localism: “We’ve tried liberalism and conservatism and now we’re trying populism. Maybe the next era...

Baseball, Debt, and Postman

“Birds, Bricklayers, and Baseball.” Sam Edgin reviews Stanley Hauerwas’s new book, The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson, which is comprised of 16...

The Contemplative Life, Southern Writers, and a Tech Backlash

“Review: A Trappist monk tells of a life worth living.” Gregory Hillis reviews a new book by Brother Paul Quenon, a monk who began...

Agroecology, Eric Miller, and Manual Labor

“Bringing Farming Back to Nature.” Daniel Moss and Mark Bittman report on the encouraging growth of agroecology. (Recommended by Tom Bilbro.) “The Oak Tree Almanac.”...

Anthony Bourdain, the Galloping Gourmet, and Reading Together

“Flourishing in a Digital World.” John Fea records a live episode of The Way of Improvement Leads Home podcast. Near the end, the conversation...

R. S. Thomas, Paul Kingsnorth, and Monsanto’s “Demise”

“Poetic Orthodoxy.” Peter Leithart writes about the faith and the conflicted attachment to Wales that animate R. S. Thomas’s poems. “Why ‘Monsanto’ is No More.”...

Habermas on the Public Square, Polarization, and Kernza

“Carmen.” Stromae has a music video that’s relevant to our recent conversation about localist social media. Here’s what I want to know: What might...

Disenchantment, Facebookistan, and John Ruskin

“Disenchantment, Actually.” Doug Sikkema reviews The Myth of Dis enchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences by Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm. He’s...