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In Praise of Old Fencerows

Within five years you could have a tiny piece of managed nature, in which more birds sing than you would have thought possible

Cleaning an Empty Home

There is not a lot of time for sentimentality when you’re in the final week of madly preparing to list your empty, but very much “lived-in,” house

Places That Remember Themselves: The Erosion of Memory in an Unmoored World

There are still places that remember themselves. Whose inhabitants know them intimately and love them deeply.

Writing Exile and Reading Homeward

Here, then, is my homecoming of the imagination: to hold the past bright in memory, and to love also the saplings and the weeds of my exile.
Matthew Miller
February 14, 2025

The Maps of Our Lives Point Homeward

Older and wiser, I have long learned that for all the times I wanted to visit far-away places, there is no place like home.
February 6, 2025

There’s No Place Like Home

We are desperately in need of a collective vision of what it means to love our homes.

The Writing on the Wall

The writing may still be on the wall, but a different story is being written in our block.

Boarding House at the End of the World

Zoning laws, housing codes, and a culture marked by suspicion and antisociality make it difficult to revive the boarding house, a living arrangement that once applied to nearly half of…

What’s In Your Garage?

No home but the Garden was there originally for man, once upon a very long time ago. No garage either was part of life before expulsion from Eden.

A Flat Surface Upon Which to Eat

It’s a new year, and many of us are thinking about self-improvement. This is a wonderful thing to do. We all need a bit of a tune-up now and then.…

Responding to Your Email: Better Late Than Never

It is, I realized, handy to have a proper template handy, ready to use, should my fears come true, and I discover that I really did forget to answer an…

One Homeschool Year: A Local Story in Four Seasons

One learning outcome I had in mind for this academic year was to teach all students to close the bathroom door when using the facilities. Alas, we seem to have…

The New House, The New Life

I fear that neither liberals nor most self-styled conservatives want to reexamine the habits, both economic and sexual, that have impoverished the working class, set the middle class on the…

From the Editor — Local Culture 5.1

here are many such images, as many images as there are places where good folk deep in this life perform the communal rites of place. Several of them are collected…
Jason Peters
May 5, 2023

Bono’s Search for Home

To hear that message of tough love for which he seems to be yearning, those who represent the church to Bono will have to have the courage to break through…

Selling 3301

Today, many in our society seem to want change for its own sake. I hope a different spirit continues among those neighbors and the street remains a neighborhood as it…

Home, Revisited

The pandemic has provided an opportunity to recenter our lives around home and family

More than a Step on the Boss Man’s Ladder

If Dolly Parton left the Smoky Mountains, it seems to have been on a hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell would have recognized. She came back, bearing gifts.

I Hear Kentucky Singing

Whatever our color or life or place of origin, we can all sing of our longing for home, our love of the natural world, our delight in children, and our…

Pilgrims Longing for Home

As someone who appreciates the value of place, rootedness, and limitations on my horizon of vision, I’m afflicted with deep sense of unease as to the nature of my own…

Good Night, Sweet Babe Magnet

It's as if two men are talking fondly about a woman both of them were once married to.
Jason Peters
August 23, 2017

And Then Came the Chickens, Part Two: A Dispatch from Dumb-Ass Acres

“Bawk-bawk be-gehk!” she cries, and I know just where she’s coming from.
Jason Peters
August 15, 2017

And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch

Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
Jason Peters
June 21, 2017

A Place Called Home – Even When You’re Young

Since posting "A Place Called Home" we have learned of the passing of Otto Warmbier. Just as home is the place where absence is felt most durably, so home is…