The Water Dipper 328
Conservation, Inflation, and Boeing
“‘This Will Finish Us.’” I finished reading Wendell Berry’s Unsettling of America this week with a group of students, so this heartbreaking essay by Stephanie McCrummen about how the Tanzanian…
Refuge, Levitation, and Hospitality
“The Liberalism of Refuge.” I think that Bryan Garsten’s notion of “refuge” isn’t robust enough to do all the work he’s asking it to do in this account, but he…
Hands, Surveillance, and Church
“Angry Farmers Are Reshaping Europe.” While this New York Times article predictably frames European farmers’ frustrations through the lens of the “far right” and its rising political power, Roger Cohen…
War, Conversation, and Regrets
“In ‘Barons,’ Austin Frerick Takes on the Most Powerful Families in the Food System.” Twilight Greenaway interviews Frerick on the depressing stories of corporate power and government capitulation that his…
Doubt, Fungi, and Water
“What New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman Gets Wrong About Rural America.” Wendell Berry responds to Krugman’s column about a new book on “white rural rage”: “A person who has…
Port William, Local News, and Liberal Arts
“The Stackpole Legend.” Wendell Berry has a new short story out in Threepenny Review, and it’s a good one: “Once in time, as Art Rowanberry would put it, a boy,…
Creatures, Friendship, and Personality
“Complicity and Hope in Wendell Berry’s Membership.” Next February, we’ll be hosting a conference here at Grove City College to reflect on the writings of Wendell Berry. Andrew Peterson will…
Poetry, Parking, and Electricity
“Thinking as a Human Being.” David Weinberger reviews James D. Madden’s Thinking about Thinking: Mind and Meaning in the Era of Techno-Nihilism, which probes underlying questions about the nature of…
Italian Bears, Middle Age, and Rural Renewal
“Taking the High Road.” Nadya Williams issues a stirring call to root liberal education in a transcendent vision of what it means to be human: “what if the future of…
Flourishing, Paper, and Fake Meat
“Against Human Flourishing.” Paul Griffiths gently suggests that the paradigm of “flourishing” may be inadequate to ascribe meaning to our lives and efforts: “Damage, flourishing’s apparent opposite, may have contributions…
Farming Workshops, Music, and Apple Vision
“Growing, Fermenting, Canning, and Why?” The Maurin Academy is hosting a slate of discussions on home food production to get you ready for the growing season: “It’s time to plan…
Buffalo, Kitchens, and Control
“Red Dragonflies.” Steven Knepper offers a deeply informed consideration of Byung-Chul Han’s intellectual and spiritual trajectory. Knepper argues that Han’s emphasis on contemplation has much to offer: “The Church’s contemplative…
Taylor Swift, Foreign Policy, and Flannery O’Connor
“Swift Going.” It’s hard to describe this essay by Peter Bast. But you should definitely read it: “I’m still amazed that my folks allowed me to see the Grateful Dead…
AI, Bureaucratization, and NIMBYs
“Keep Your Money Close.” Jane Clark Scharl draws on the localist principle of subsidiarity to diagnose how online shopping leads to a scarcity of human interaction and to suggest some…
Alaska, Smartphones, and Realignment
“The Resurrection of the Bawdy.” J.C. Scharl ponders the strange, grotesque wisdom of Francois Rabelais: “there must be a reciprocal relationship between our high culture and our low. High culture…
Prudence, Sabotage, and Despair
I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off from putting together these Water Dippers. I plan to resume in the new year. “The Case for Left Conservatism.” Ashley Colby…
Salmon, Hope, and Climatism
“A Great Historian’s Inner History.” Jeff Reimer reviews Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind and describes the particular genius Brown has for imagining the lives of those far separated from…
Stagnation, War, and Tyranny
“Where Can You Go to Grad School Without Going to Grad School?” Cat Zhang describes how The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research strives to make intellectual community available for those…
Home, Thanksgiving, and Mania
“Home Is Where One Starts From.” J.C. Scharl praises art that comes from and in turn feeds a commitment to a particular place: “Art should touch our wills; it should…
Michigan, Las Vegas, and Willa Cather
“George Scialabba’s Prejudice for Progress.” Come for Sam Adler-Bell’s summary of Scialabba’s appraisal of modernity, stay for his paean to the way Scialabba models what it means to be an…
Chicken, Water, and Elections
“Oiling the Chicken Machine.” Garth Brown brings his typically thoughtful and balanced perspective to bear on the question of lab grown meat. As he points out, detailing the horrific conditions…
Chalk, Fungi, and Goldenrod
We’ve posted videos of the conference talks. We’ll also release audio versions via the Brass Spittoon podcast in the coming weeks. “Porch Sittin'.” Nathaniel Marshall gives his recap of the…
Decentralism, Byung-Chul Han, and Cemeteries
“‘Living As Humans in A Machine Age’: Reflections on this Year’s Front Porch Republic Conference.” Dixie Dillon Lane reflects on last week’s conference and puts her finger on what unites…
Suffering, Block Revitalization, and Faithful Presence
“Macedonia Morning.” Dana Wiser relates an inspiring account of a group of people committed to leading lives in the service of peace, despite the many attendant challenges: "Staughton once told…