Love, Landmarks, and Chestnuts
“Can Love Take Sides?” The new issue of Plough is full of worthwhile essays, but Porchers will want to start with this essay by...
Expertise, Facebook, and Friendship
“The Good Death in Psalm 73.” Timothy Kleiser draws out the wisdom regarding mortality and human finitude in Margaret Edson’s moving play Wit with...
Compliance, Bourbon Tourism, and Sequoias
“No More 'Normal.' How to Live after the COVID Apocalypse.” I reflect on the themes of our upcoming conference and Chris Arnade’s book in...
Rare Earths, Canning, and Exhaustion
“David McCullough, Master Chronicler of American History, Dies at 89.” Glenn Rifkin remembers a remarkable storyteller who made forgotten aspects of American history come...
Leftovers, Dumb Phones, and Waiting Tables
“Hoping for Doomsday.” I’ve been savoring the summer issue of Plough. Peter Mommsen’s opening editorial is, as usual, excellent: “In the interim of the...
Illich, Finitude, and Authority
“The Corruption of the Best: On Ivan Illich.” Geoff Shullenberger takes the occasion of David Cayley’s intellectual biography of Ivan Illich to offer a...
Sympathy, Weeds, and Brutal Friends
“How Foreign Private Equity Hooked New England’s Fishing Industry.” Will Sennott has an in-depth report on the ways the local owners and fishermen in...
Journalism, Poetry, and Play
“A Way of Life Being Lost.” Ruth Conniff visits Henry County, KY to talk with Wendell Berry and Mary Berry about rural America, the...
Seeds, Reality, and Eucatastrophe
“Syria’s Seed Planters.” Plough’s Summer 2022 issue on “Hope in Apocalypse” has many essays on this important virtue. One of the most moving, I...
The Regime, Progress, and the Last Battle
I'll be taking the month of June off email and, for the most part, the Internet. FPR will continue publishing essays while I'm away--we...