community 241
The End We Imagine
I recently had a chance to watch the film The Giver. Sometimes we get films early, sometimes late, sometimes at the same time as they are released in the United…
The Little Way of Raymond Chandler
Or, "Shaken and Stirred: The Cosmopolitan, the City, and the Regime of God" Queens, NY The following essay was presented at FPR's annual conference in Louisville on September 27. What…
City Liberty, Country Liberty
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] It's clear to me that one of the primary things people (in the United States, certainly, but also elsewhere) think about when trying to understand…
Life in the Kolache Belt: Reflections from the Intersection of Food, Faith, Farming, and Fracking
In some ways, the little farming community of Hallettsville where I have spent a writing sabbatical still resides in a simpler time. Czechs and Germans came in the 1800s and…
An Alternative to Cosmopolitanism
[This post is adapted with permission from “Making Places: The Cosmopolitan Temptation,” an essay in the anthology Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America, edited by…
Abbeville Institute Summer School: “Understanding the South and the Southern Tradition.”
Many FPR readers may be interested in attending the Abbeville Institute's Eleventh Annual Summer School: "Understanding the South and the Southern Tradition." It will be held at St. Christopher Conference Center, Seabrook…
Memory and the Damming State
The family’s life in this village had come to an end when the lake was dammed in 1958. One wonders who would consider such things worth it.
The Unmaking and Making of Community
The following is a talk given at the annual conference of The Academy of Philosophy and Letters on June 16, 2012 in Baltimore, MD. In her book The Need for…
“Derrida’s Hope and Despair for Globalization”
Many FPR readers will enjoy "Derrida’s Hope and Despair for Globalization" in ANAMNESIS.
Ciceronian Society Conference at UVA, March 29-31
FPR readers are invited to attend the coming Ciceronian Society Conference at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, March 29-31. All attendance to observe the panels is free of charge.…
Traditionalist Critique of Marx and An Analysis of Hawthorne in ANAMNESIS
FPR readers will be interested in both (1) K.R. Bolton's traditionalist Conservative critique of Marx and Ideological-Capitalism and (2) Lee Trepanier's examination of the use of history in Hawthorne.
Mafia Among the Mountain Folk, Part II
“I don’t care if you bring the president of Peru and a thousand police—we’ll be carried out dead before you dig here!” Thus was the position of the twenty or…
Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising: Ten Years Down the Road
Springsteen’s music does indeed return to the things that are most important in an hour of crisis. But contrary to popular impressions, these things turn out to have very little…
Mafia Among the Mountain Folk
What ironies of fate converged that morning, such that a mob was about to come out on a march against us?
Community, Storytelling, and Remembering
And I'm certain my bovine stare was a dead giveaway that I found it troubling to imagine him wearing anything but a felt fedora while riding a horse named Hobby.
Preserving Local Culture
Last Sunday I sat on the church porch, smoked my pipe and listened as some of our musicians played their guitars and mandolins. One of the songs we sang…
The Statute of Limitations has Passed
They never quite got it when they asked me if I was “going home for Christmas” and I replied, “I live at home.”
Self-Esteem v. Standards
The fundamental reason why American children are not educated properly is simply because the American people do not want their children to be educated properly.
Community & Language
Their language is hopeful and would be recognizable to any tobacco farmer of the last hundred years. But now they are talking about food.
In Praise of Gossip
Gossip, under the right circumstances, acts as a virtue which demonstrates concern and thickens social ties.
