The Water Dipper
Land, Cheating, and Work
“How Major League Baseball Lost its Soul.” Bill Kauffman may be biased, but at least he’s honest: “I highly recommend Homestand, Will Bardenwerper’s new book contrasting the community-enhancing qualities of grass-roots baseball…
More Articles in The Water Dipper
Flourishing, Paper, and Fake Meat
“Against Human Flourishing.” Paul Griffiths gently suggests that the paradigm of “flourishing” may be inadequate to ascribe meaning to our lives and efforts: “Damage, flourishing’s apparent opposite, may have contributions of its…
Farming Workshops, Music, and Apple Vision
“Growing, Fermenting, Canning, and Why?” The Maurin Academy is hosting a slate of discussions on home food production to get you ready for the growing season: “It’s time to plan a garden,…
Buffalo, Kitchens, and Control
“Red Dragonflies.” Steven Knepper offers a deeply informed consideration of Byung-Chul Han’s intellectual and spiritual trajectory. Knepper argues that Han’s emphasis on contemplation has much to offer: “The Church’s contemplative practices are…
Taylor Swift, Foreign Policy, and Flannery O’Connor
“Swift Going.” It’s hard to describe this essay by Peter Bast. But you should definitely read it: “I’m still amazed that my folks allowed me to see the Grateful Dead unsupervised as…
AI, Bureaucratization, and NIMBYs
“Keep Your Money Close.” Jane Clark Scharl draws on the localist principle of subsidiarity to diagnose how online shopping leads to a scarcity of human interaction and to suggest some remedies:“I’ve talked…
Alaska, Smartphones, and Realignment
“The Resurrection of the Bawdy.” J.C. Scharl ponders the strange, grotesque wisdom of Francois Rabelais: “there must be a reciprocal relationship between our high culture and our low. High culture does not…
Prudence, Sabotage, and Despair
I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off from putting together these Water Dippers. I plan to resume in the new year. “The Case for Left Conservatism.” Ashley Colby looks to…
Salmon, Hope, and Climatism
“A Great Historian’s Inner History.” Jeff Reimer reviews Peter Brown’s Journeys of the Mind and describes the particular genius Brown has for imagining the lives of those far separated from him in…
Stagnation, War, and Tyranny
“Where Can You Go to Grad School Without Going to Grad School?” Cat Zhang describes how The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research strives to make intellectual community available for those who don’t…
Home, Thanksgiving, and Mania
“Home Is Where One Starts From.” J.C. Scharl praises art that comes from and in turn feeds a commitment to a particular place: “Art should touch our wills; it should move us…
Michigan, Las Vegas, and Willa Cather
“George Scialabba’s Prejudice for Progress.” Come for Sam Adler-Bell’s summary of Scialabba’s appraisal of modernity, stay for his paean to the way Scialabba models what it means to be an “amateur” intellectual:…
Chicken, Water, and Elections
“Oiling the Chicken Machine.” Garth Brown brings his typically thoughtful and balanced perspective to bear on the question of lab grown meat. As he points out, detailing the horrific conditions in which…
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