Tag: nostalgia

Localism without Nostalgia

Let’s have a localism without nostalgia, a practical but also a faithful localism. As localists let’s be committed to an accurate accounting of the checkered past that grounds our hope.

More of the Familiar in Wendell Berry’s How It Went

He has never chased the new or tried to be avant-garde. Even in the physical act of writing, he has famously resisted the “advantages” of a personal computer and has opted instead to continue using the older technologies of pencil and paper. Though How It Went is technically a new book from Berry, the stories are pleasingly familiar.

The Uses of Nostalgia

Nostalgia's got a bad rap, but, in addition to being nearly inescapable, it has indispensable benefits, provided it’s kept within reasonable limits.

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...

When the Witch of November Comes Stealin’

There’s a certain aching joy in the chill of regret.

Two Last Suppers and Ordinary Greatness: A Double Eulogy

What are the compensations on the downhill side of life?

From the Trinity Capital

Beyond the purple velvet drapes, the skeins of billowed gossamer, my hotel window looks down on the back gates of Trinity College. Up three floors and pierced by a late October sun, the room has been done up like a swinger’s pad, with leopard print and leather, with mirrors and conic shaded lights in orbit about the dark mass of the pillowed bed.

Homesick Nation

In 1852, the first piano arrived in Stockton, California. Imported from Cincinnati, it was a gift to Mary Kroh from her father, a minister...

A Product of Speed

Nostalgia is, therefore, an index of alienation, communal decrepitude, and, at high levels, cultural patricide.

The Vast White Landscape: E.B. White’s “Great Snows” Revisited

Rock Island, IL A century ago in New England, the approach to snow was quite different. When snow began to fly, people switched to...