The Barbershop
Friendship and its Paradoxes
Friendship is a fulfillment of our nature: the recognition that loving another for their own sake is, paradoxically, itself essential to our own flourishing.
More Articles in The Barbershop
On Not Losing Our Minds to Technology
A machine can read books out loud to the baby. A machine can rock the baby to sleep. Smart devices and apps can do these and many other things. But they can…
The Uglification of Michigan Lake Towns
America is known for its English-Protestant roots, for the pilgrims who settled the Eastern seaboard and the Anglos who descended from them. But America has a French-Catholic history, too, and Northern Michigan…
Medieval Hillbilly Kings, Priests, Pagans, and Poets: Beowulf, Johnny Cash, and Trent Reznor
Cash may as well be situated in an Anglo-Saxon mead hall, a broken ring-giver, a pagan, who for all his good intentions, cannot heal that which infects his people and himself.
Boom Towns Go Bust
Civil society relies on common spaces where people of all backgrounds can meet, but states and cities have been pursuing semi-privatization of public spaces.
Sigmund Freud’s Grief
In expressing his love through epistolary lament, it may be that Freud discovered the precise meaning he felt he had lost.
American Holland and Dutch America: On the Exoticization of Culture
Culture is the ever-evolving play that takes place on that stage, as new props come and old props are replaced, even as the theater remains the same. Of course, the play is…
Manual Training for All
Jobs in construction, health care, and manufacturing technology need not lead to dead ends...
Paranoia and Perfect Love
It would be easy to dismiss my argument as a simple platitude: “Trust God.” But it is trust in the infinite that allows us to trust finite beings.
Safe at Last
As the sun rises over the Nile or my daughter’s grave, it occurs to me that the ancient Egyptians may have been onto something. Jess lives on, her soul soars to heaven,…
The Jigsaw Revolution: Finding Peace, Piece by Piece
The way of the puzzler is not about reaching a certain goal. If it were, the perfectly fine image would never have been broken up to begin with. The way of the…
The Heartbreak behind the EEG
Modern physicians use Hans Berger’s invention to save lives every day
The Consolation of Silence
Your presence is needed. Hush. Stay. Show your love by letting them grieve.
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