Front Porch Republic
The Biblical Case for Conservation
The Bible tells us there is life within the Kingdom—life for us and life for what is around us.
The Year We Went Inorganic
When my wife and I started our rural homestead, we were suburbanites with a lot of ideas. For one, we’d do everything organically. No question. Second, we’d endeavor to only…
Pears, Asparagus, and Contemporary Psychotherapy
Even in our modern age, then, it seems that Trueman’s “modern self” as narcissistic echo chamber, unconstrained by relationships with family and community, has not entirely triumphed after all.
Rooted in Reality
We were all, adults and children alike, doing things that really mattered to the whole free world, and we’d better get on with doing them, every day, all the time.…
A Conversation with Katy Carl on Place, Fiction, and Contemplation
Conjuring makes me think of force and manipulation, which as writers we have to forswear. Readers will either notice they're being manipulated and throw our books aside—or maybe worse, they…
News, Notes, & Podcasts
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Madeleine L’Engle, Slow Media, and Populism
“A Flourishing Tree.” Tamara Hill Murphy reviews Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace by Christie Purifoy, a book that circles “round and round the subject of finding, losing, and making home.” “Two Tolkiens, One Better World.” Bradley J. Birzer reviews The…
Wanderlust Keeps us From Leading Meaningful Lives: Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Stoics
The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by…
Fighting Demons, Liberal and Otherwise
We like to flatter ourselves that we live in extraordinary times. Every four years, for example, we are told that this presidential election is “the most important of our life.” Those of us who make a living paying attention to public things,…
Monsanto, the Heartland Forum, and Becoming Creaturely
“The Center Holds.” Nicole M. King reviews The Midwestern Moment: The Forgotten World of Early Twentieth-Century Midwestern Regionalism, 1880-1940, edited by Jon K. Lauck, for the University Bookman. The table of contents includes several Porchers, and King argues that it’s a compelling,…
Toward a Somewhere Suburb
In his 2017 book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, British commentator David Goodhart seeks to understand the recent populist moments that have shaped the West, from Brexit in the U.K. to the election of…
From Dogs to Fur Babies–and Back Again
As Edward Abbey said, “When a man’s best friend is a dog, then that dog has a problem.”
Found: The Perfect FPR Presidential Candidate!
Over the last several years, our little band over at Solidarity Hall—myself, Susannah Black, Mark Gordon, Matt Cooper, Grace Potts, and a few more—have entertained ourselves by watching various Facebook political insurgencies come and go. These are various “third way” experiments,…
The Table, Topsoil, and the Midwest
Plough Quarterly No. 20: The Welcome Table. The Spring issue of Plough Quarterly is online and has many essays of interest to Porchers. To mention just a few, Norman Wirzba writes about hospitality and gardening, Johannes Meier describes how Australian farmers are responding to…
What Urban Liberals Might Learn From Rural Rebels
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Loka Ashwood, a rural sociologist at Auburn University, visited The Land Institute in Salina, KS, last September, and gave a presentation on her then just-published book, For-Profit Democracy: Why the Government Is Losing the Trust…
Reading Seed Catalogs for Pleasure and Profit
Gardeners are a modest and sober breed, not much given to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the pride of life. We are generally free of covetousness (save towards our neighbor’s early tomato), rage (unless…
Why Heidegger Stayed in the Provinces—and Why it is Not Time for the ‘Robert Penn Warren Option’
In 1934, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, tired of his ill-inclined maneuvering to become the celebrity intellectual who would steer the Nazi Party into greatness, resigned from his rectorate at Freiburg and returned to focus on philosophy, a return resulting in…
Dairy Farmers, Nebraska, and the Common Good
"Sealed in Blood: Aristopopulism and the City of Man.” Susannah Black wrote a small book in response to Patrick Deneen’s recent talk on aristopopulism. It’s quite rich and merits slow, thoughtful reading. And such reading will give hope. Susannah discerns…
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