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nostalgia 14

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.

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.

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.
January 23, 2024

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…
November 8, 2022

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 to the nature of my own…
February 22, 2019

When the Witch of November Comes Stealin’

There’s a certain aching joy in the chill of regret.
Jason Peters
November 14, 2018

Two Last Suppers and Ordinary Greatness: A Double Eulogy

What are the compensations on the downhill side of life?
Jason Peters
March 1, 2017

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…

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 who had traveled west to preach…

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 runners. Roads were not plowed out,…
Jason Peters
December 23, 2009

The Booth Tarkington Appreciation Society

Hillsdale, MI. I propose the creation of TBTAS, “The Booth Tarkington Appreciation Society.”  If we take the liberties some have with the Tetragrammaton (Y*H*W*H) and pronounce it “yahway,” we could…

The Internet Won’t Feed You, and Neither Will We

Rod Dreher posts a letter from a young 'un asking about law school and farming.  Similarly, a commenter here last week asked: I have only ever been acquainted, through my extended…
March 18, 2009