The Water Dipper
Seasons, Steel, and Profit
“In Due Season.” Chris Gregorio reviews and praises Matt Miller’s Leaves of Healing: “As he reflects on each slice of liturgical time and the period of garden time in which it occurs,…
More Articles in The Water Dipper
Conversion, Catan, and Vinyl
“Arcs of Life.” Matthew Loftus considers the claim that all suffering is bad and should be eliminated: “Yet taking this dictum and making it into a law is at the root of…
Barbarians, Liberalism, and Disinformation
“We Must Become Barbarians.” Paul Kingsnorth sketches out possible strategies of resistance to the Machine that evade its systems rather than confronting them directly: “What Scott’s book shows me above all is…
Happiness, Blues, and the Farm Bill
“Renunciation and Christian Happiness.” In this excerpt from her new book, Zena Hitz probes the paradox at the core of a Christian view of happiness: “Both Aristotle and Paul have radical ideas…
Bison, Ignorance, and Selfies
“The Return of the Bison.” In the latest issue of Plough (which is another excellent issue), Nathan Beacom explores how bison continue to hold ecosystems together: “The American bison stands at the…
AP Classes, Vertical Farming, and Surf Localism
“The College Board’s Hollow Vision.” Annie Abrams draws attention to the College Board’s self-serving tactics and bureaucratic approach to pedagogy. AP classes really aren’t equivalent to a good college course: “Students, parents,…
Hedgerows, Bird Flu, and Truckers
“Inside the Dissident Fringe, Where the New Right Meets the Far Left, and Everyone’s Bracing for Apocalypse.” James Pogue goes to the American West to investigate how opposition to globalism has brought…
Wild Christianity, Trains, and Chatbots
“A Wild Christianity.” Paul Kingsnorth considers what we can learn from the cave Christians and their rich legacy: “In a time when the temptation is always toward culture war rather than inner…
Slime, Memorization, and Forests
“Creatures That Don’t Conform.” You don’t have to agree with Lucy Jones’s politics or philosophy to share her amazement at slime mold (and don’t miss Barry Webb’s photographs): “They can humble us—with…
Livestreams, Motherhood, and Education
“Watch the Great Fall.” Paul Kingsnorth acknowledges his own tendencies toward nostalgia and draws on some fine poets to articulate the proper posture toward decline: “The theologies of Zen, Orthodoxy, Mark Anthony…
Gratitude, Competence, and Libraries
“Ronald Blythe Obituary.” Patrick Barkham remembers a great localist writer: “Never out of print and read and studied around the world, Akenfield made Blythe famous and perhaps overshadowed the many other fruits…
Time, Pig Farms, and Peer Review
I’m helping to lead a study abroad trip in Rome for the next couple of weeks, so the Water Dipper will be on hiatus. But I plan to return at the end…
Surveillance, Hope, and Poetry
“Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech to Expand Global Surveillance.” A team of AP reporters—Garance Burke, Josef Federman, Huizhong Wu, Krutika Pathi and Rod McGuirk—detail how COVID surveillance technologies are being used in…
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