John Murdock
Host of Brass Spittoon
John Murdock is an attorney and globetrotting localist who worked for over a decade in Washington, D.C.; left the Capital Beltway to write from a family farmhouse deep in the heart of the Lone Star state; taught law in South Korea; and then rode the housing waves of Boise. In 2023, John left the crisp dry air of Idaho and returned to the stifling humidity of his native east Texas. His writing is catalogued at johnmurdock.org.
Articles by John Murdock
Saving Trees Across The Ocean
The view from above was one of devastation, even if it was the pregnant devastation of a construction site that is not what it will finally become. The leafy green…
Saving Life on Mars, and in Appalachia
Recently, I watched as the people of Earth came together to bring The Martian home. Interstellar, Gravity, and Wall-E all tell the “lost in space” tale with more filmmaking skill…
The Pope and the Plowman
Wendell Berry and Pope Francis have been drinking from the same well of living water. I dig into the connections between the pope and the plowman at First Things.
The Incredible Industrial Egg
The local library’s inventory reduction sale had progressed over several weeks from a buck a book and a dollar a DVD, to two dollars a flat, and finally to a…
The Cardinal and the Capitalist
A cleric with the ear of Pope Francis recently sent Catholic defenders of free markets into a tizzy. At a press conference, Cardinal Oscar Rodriquez Maradiaga of Honduras tossed out…
Remembering a Good Oak
Trees cannot talk, but they do speak. With our eyes focused on franticly flickering screens, perhaps our ears have grown dull to their still small voices, yet they whisper on.…
The Academy Awards as a Religious Experience
The stylish crowd that walked the red carpet to the Oscars likely had not donned their Sunday best earlier in the day for a trip to church. Even so, the…
Huckabee’s Shifting Shades of Green
As he began making the early “exploratory” rounds, a smiling Mike Huckabee recently reminded Martha Raddatz on ABC’s political Sunday show This Week that in 2008 he had run a…
Orwell and Huxley, Together Again: ‘The Interview’ and our Culture of Distraction
By now you’ve already forgotten last month’s most important celebrity cause, namely the embodiment of freedom of expression known as The Interview. Hollywood has too, of course. It's so 2014.…
Phenomenal Ben Carson and the Consequential Richard Weaver
“Ben Carson: Political Phenomenon.” That gushing headline, at CNN.com of all virtual places, was followed by a puff piece of epic proportions. Of course, with a Horatio Alger worthy biography…
Opening Night, Way off Broadway: Greater Tuna in Shiner, Texas
In this edition of Tales from the Kolache Belt, we celebrate community theatre. Not many rural towns of just over 2,000 souls can boast an institution like the Gaslight Theatre,…
Life in the Kolache Belt: Reflections from the Intersection of Food, Faith, Farming, and Fracking
In some ways, the little farming community of Hallettsville where I have spent a writing sabbatical still resides in a simpler time. Czechs and Germans came in the 1800s and…