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The Water Dipper

More Articles in The Water Dipper

Hermits, Homesickness, and Barbarians

“Inis Cealtra.” Paul Kingsnorth explains—sort of—what he’ll be writing about for the foreseeable future. What makes it challenging to explain is that he’s after something beyond words: “The silence of the hermit,…
September 16, 2023

Digital Community, Dramatic History, and Suburban Sprawl

“The Community Community.” Nathan Beacom parses the effects that digital technologies have had on the way we imagine and experience community: “something important has changed about the way we think about community…
September 9, 2023

Friday Night Lights, an AI Boom, and Buggy Lanes

“The Kind of People We Need at the End of the World.” Elizabeth Oldfield shares her family’s journey into communal living and relates how the humble, daily acts of prayer and cooking…
September 2, 2023

Bees, Local Music, and David Jones

“The Death of Conservatism Is Greatly Exaggerated.” In her critical response to Jon Askonas’s essay on how technologies erode traditions, Christine Rosen takes issue with his argument that conservatism has failed to…
August 26, 2023

Time, Secrets, and Water

“What is Time For?” In this excerpt from The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education, Zena Hitz queries the way in which we spend our time. As she points out,…
August 19, 2023

David James Duncan, Peter Viereck, and Charlotte Mason

“The Liberating Arts Book Launch.” If you’ll be in NYC this September 28th, join us for a panel discussion and book launch event for a book I co-edited on the enduring relevance…
August 12, 2023

Facts, Bears, and Democracy

“Rage against the Baseball Machine.” Bill Kauffman wasn’t keen on watching a baseball game where balls and strikes were determined by a machine: “We are told by ABS advocates that transferring the…
August 5, 2023

Reconciliation, History, and Localism

This will be the last Water Dipper for a few weeks. I’ll be taking some time off from email and the Internet. I plan to resume the Water Dipper in August, after,…
July 1, 2023

The Rust Belt, Ducks, and Lanternflies

“Barbara Kingsolver: ‘Rural people are so angry they want to blow up the system.’” Lisa Allardice talks with Barbara Kingsolver about her new novel: “Raised in Kentucky, Kingsolver describes herself as ‘Appalachian,…
June 24, 2023

The Commons, Alfalfa, and Oats

“Piety, Technology, and Tradition.” Jon Askonas responds to a critique from Alan Jacobs about the difficulty of conserving traditions in our current technological environment: “I can hand down my faith to my…
June 17, 2023

Localism, Liberalism, and Regionalism

“Fidelity to Place.” James Matthew Wilson speaks on behalf of honoring our unchosen bonds: “What is missing from modern life is fidelity—and not just fidelity in general, but fidelity to those things…
June 10, 2023

Money, the Wild, and the Metaverse

“Living as Humans in a Machine Age.” Registration is now open for our fall conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Paul Kingsnorth will be the keynote speaker, and we’ll post the full schedule soon.…
June 3, 2023
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