Place. Limits. Liberty.
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Fighting Loneliness and Polarization with Chili

I am not sure if Garfield ever made chili for his supporters. The men and women who descended on his property were there to meet a future president. What Garfield…
November 29, 2024

Do-able Simplicities: On Letter Writing and Fountain Pens

Holding the letters was a delicate experience, noting the brittle nature of the paper, being careful not to let them tear at the aged folds, and yet the blue ink,…
November 28, 2024

Moana Revisited: A Better Disney Princess

Rather than forging a new identity, she returns to old paths. Moana is not following her inner voice. She is listening to the echoes of her ancestors.
November 27, 2024

Shopping Local in a Storm

I mourn the storm. It’s far from over. But I also do not mourn without hope.
November 26, 2024

Belonging to the Garden

I belong to this place—if not for the next thousand years, at least for the summer. In such a displaced age, even that has to mean something.
Matthew Miller
November 18, 2024

At Home with James Matthew Wilson  

However, in St. Thomas and the Forbidden Birds, James Matthew Wilson shows that the seeds of a rebirth of civilization are to be planted and nurtured in the soil of…
November 13, 2024

Two Cheers for E-Bikes

Automobiles shield you from the outside world, its sounds, its colors. But on my bike, I encounter my environment directly.
November 8, 2024

A Homeward Calling: Review of Tony Woodlief’s We Shall Not All Sleep

One of the novel’s achievements is the way that it unfolds this centuries-long story with both clarity and subtlety, establishing a clear feel for right and wrong while casting no…

The Miraculous Phenomenon of Post-Hurricane Weather

When Christ died on the cross, the disciples did not know he was going to rise again. But for Christians today, we see the full picture, and these are not…
October 28, 2024

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…
October 25, 2024

Road Kill

I had to understand life and nature not as something to be mastered, but as gifts afforded to me to steward by a God abundant in goodness.

Wheeler Catlett’s Love Beyond Organization in Wendell Berry’s “Fidelity”

Organized community events bring people together and are an integral part of forging strong communal bonds in a place. Like the law, they serve a purpose in a community’s ecosystem…
October 17, 2024

What Plays in Peoria

You don’t have to be normal. You don’t have to be weird. You just have to be a person – which is a moral ideal, not a fact of nature…
October 15, 2024

Modern Architecture Erodes Community: What We Can Do About It

The future of our built environment is in our hands. We can reject the alienation of modernism and instead foster spaces that cultivate connection, celebrate history, and create a sense…
October 3, 2024

Real Communities and Democratic Theory

If we don’t experience full, unqualified “concrete, historical community,” then we won’t experience full, unqualified “genuine deliberation.”
September 27, 2024

Southern Appalachia is a Place

These questions would cause little debate or consternation without the importance of place tethering them. And, despite the erasure of communitarian mindsets and regional identity, place still matters.
September 25, 2024

Finding The Seam: How Small Farmers Can Thrive

There are much easier ways to make money than farming. The primary goal of a good farmer is to find success in caring for one’s land, community, and family.
September 13, 2024

The Uglification of Michigan Lake Towns

America is known for its English-Protestant roots, for the pilgrims who settled the Eastern seaboard and the Anglos who descended from them. But America has a French-Catholic history, too, and…
September 5, 2024

A Rural White American’s Reflection of White Rural Rage: Resentment is Toxic

Despite Trump’s own divisive rhetoric, he makes rural Americans feel heard in ways neither majority party has in decades. Any politician or scholar who actually wants to address the root…
September 3, 2024

Who Has Children Anymore Anyway?

Without God, a spiraling fertility rate seems certain. But on spiritual grounds, there’s always room for hope and renewal. When the seed is sown on the good soil, it bears…

Boom Towns Go Bust

Civil society relies on common spaces where people of all backgrounds can meet, but states and cities have been pursuing semi-privatization of public spaces.

American Holland and Dutch America: On the Exoticization of Culture

Culture is the ever-evolving play that takes place on that stage, as new props come and old props are replaced, even as the theater remains the same. Of course, the…

Past, Future, and Breeding Out of Captivity

Perhaps in the coming decades we shall have, so to speak, not a straightforward demographic slope downward, but more of a dip and a levelling off in the next century.
August 19, 2024

An Introductory Course in Apicultural Science: Tracy Farone’s Honey Bee Vet

But even a novice like me—hobbled by an ignorance of veterinarian science and perennially pulled toward too many projects—found the book interesting and useful.
August 12, 2024