Uncategorized 924

Dear Reader, FPR is a labor of love for most of us associated with it. We believe deeply in the ideas of place, limits, and liberty and their essential relationship…

Read this just before your shut your computer down for good. Here's a taste: Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had…

The fourth annual Front Porch Republic conference will examine ways to promote a more comprehensive localist vision that both learns from and goes beyond the increasingly successful local-food movement. It…

Check out this latest lament by Damon Linker over at The Week.

When a city's situation is as dire as Detroit's a certain amount of creativity is required. Enter the goat. And then enter Detroit's bungling mismanagers. Read the article, but don't…

Two books right now, one fiction and one non-fiction. First, the fiction: Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. I re-read this one (revisit it?) every few years. Brideshead is quite different…

On John Milius, writer-director-surfer-anarchist, from The American Conservative.

“It is for you to try to be like them.” Pericles’ Funeral Oration I have to admit a problem that I’ve had with Memorial Day. I’ve often let my thoughts…

The Academy of Philosophy and Letters will be holding its annual conference on the topic "Civil Religion and American Self-Understanding" next weekend at the BWI Doubletree in Baltimore. There are…

William Schambra has a piece at Philanthropy Daily that describes the coming showdown between two competing conceptions of philanthropic giving. Here's a taste: Community-embeddedness versus detached godliness: not a bad…

A most interesting piece over at The Atlantic wherein a world-class chef discusses his epiphany concerning the interrelatedness of flavor, sustainable farming practices, local cuisines, and supporting farms financially. Well worth…

In The American Conservative, Ralph Nader, paladin of the American anti-monopolist tradition, revives the great distributist-agrarian project of the 1930s.

[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Farley Mowat has died. Long before I knew anything about alternatives to the late-20th-century American way of life, long before I considered myself an environmentalist…

Happy birthday, Will.

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, First pledge of blithesome May, Which children pluck, and, full of pride uphold, High-hearted buccaneers,…

Here is a video of a talk Ron Paul recently delivered at a program sponsored by The Independent Institute. Paul sees signs of a shift away from concentrated power, and…

My title isn't saying anything new, unfortunately; highly competitive private kindergartens and pre-k programs have long since dotted the wealthier (and more paranoid) corners of the United States, as well…

The 2014 FPR conference will on September 27 in Louisville, KY. Wendell Berry will deliver the keynote address. More details to come, but this is shaping up to be a…

This wonderful essay--a sad, reflective, but also hopeful one--tells the story of Michelle Obama's long forgotten (by most people, anyway) backyard garden initiative, and the local farmer (the father of…

On Howard Owens and the relocalization of American journalism.

A good recent Louisville production of King Lear sent me back to my handily small Yale edition to reread this most poignant of Shakespeare's tragedies. Its title character is the…

West Michiganders: Michael Federici of Mercyhurst University will be lecturing on Hope's campus in the auditorium of the Martha Miller Center (10th and Columbia) this Thursday, April 17, on the…

Let's rent (or buy!) Copperhead, which is being released today on DVD/BluRay.

Jesse Winchester, a tuneful poet from a small corner of southern America who had to flee America--at a time when it was going through one of its more invasively imperial…