place 190
Dear Eugene
One of my heroes of the faith is dead. Eugene Peterson experienced death, but certainly not its sting, as he uttered his final words, “Let’s go,” on Monday, October 22.…
On Being Less than We Are
What you miss out on by not making the climb is too great a loss on such a morning as this.
The Cost of Knowing One’s Place
The first time you read the novels of Thomas Hardy–especially if you read them as a young adult–you’re likely to get a pretty forceful impression. With the story-telling powers of…
Reading Chatwin in Silesia
When I moved to Poland it was the first time I had left Britain. I have lived in the same town for four years and a month. Tarnowskie Góry is…
Reviving the Conversation on the Porch
I’m honored and excited to be joining the Front Porch Republic in a more official capacity and taking over the editorial duties for this site. When I stumbled across FPR…
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.
And Then Came The Chickens—After the Bobcat: A Dispatch
Heaven favored me with three successive clement weekends.
Branding Disaster
Earlier this year, after the Charlie Hebdo shootings, I reflected on the conversations that may or may not ensue from the changing of a facebook profile picture. As my facebook…
The Holy Earth and Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Front Porch Cred
He wrote sixty-five books and had a hand in another hundred and thirty-five.
30 More Years of Rootless Professors
In the thirty years since writer-professor Eric Zencey first published his essay “The Rootless Professors” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, much has changed, and much hasn’t, regarding academe’s reputedly rootless…
Oneself as Another in the Controlled Burn: A Dispatch
Low flames and smoke and visions of the eschaton.
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…
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…
Walker Percy and the Recovery of Place
[This post is adapted with permission from “GPS and the End of the Road,” an essay in the anthology Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America,…
Real Presences
Hidden Springs Lane. What’s the deal with Smart Phones? Go to any public gathering and most of the young people (and some of the not-so-young) are clearly more interested in…
Longing for Home Over Glory: An Artful Interpretation of the Epic Poems by Homer and Virgil
Dramatic paths to glory are viewed with skepticism in our modern democratic age. As Tocqueville suggests, “amongst democratic nations ambition is ardent and continual, but its aim is not habitually…
Conservatism: What’s Wrong with it and How Can We Make it Right?
This is my contribution to ISI’s symposium, Conservatism: What’s Wrong with it and How Can We Make it Right? In one sense, there is nothing wrong with conservatism. The principles…
The Night of Susurrant Voices
God didn't put twelve months on the calendar so we could work them all.
The Limits of Place
Hidden Springs, VA. Recently Ross Douthat commented on Rod Dreher’s new book in a column devoted to the rising incidence of suicide and the problem of loneliness. In a follow-up…
Where Will You Die?
Hidden Spring Lane. “I plan on dying here.” The words came quite unbidden and surprised me. We were in the process of building a house on a few acres in…
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.
On Being a Worthy Heir of the Agrarian Contrarians
But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”
“Derrida’s Hope and Despair for Globalization”
Many FPR readers will enjoy "Derrida’s Hope and Despair for Globalization" in ANAMNESIS.