place 200

[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,…

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…

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…

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…

God didn't put twelve months on the calendar so we could work them all.

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…

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…

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.

But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”

Many FPR readers will enjoy "Derrida’s Hope and Despair for Globalization" in ANAMNESIS.

Many FPR readers will enjoy the new symposium, "Views on Hawthorne, Simms, History, and Progress," in ANAMNESIS, A Journal for the Study of Tradition, Place, and 'Things Divine.'

FPR readers will be interested in both (1) K.R. Bolton's traditionalist Conservative critique of Marx and Ideological-Capitalism and (2) Lee Trepanier's examination of the use of history in Hawthorne.

If you think you may legitimately enjoy the physical benefits of a place while dwelling in the airy regions of judgment above it, you’d better think again.

One thing that has amused me in these first three years of FPR’s existence is the tendency of some readers to single out one or two articles and lament that…

“The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what he saw in a plain way …” John Ruskin I do not…

Absent is the self-examination of the person in the mirror and how we exchange with loved ones around the dinner table. Forgotten is how to live a life more thoughtfully,…

Breaking free from the voices, soundtrack, machinery, and plastic of consumption and advertising gives an individual the opportunity to consider questions and ideas that the world outside St. Raymond’s continually…

Is there any difference now between college ball and the NFL?

They never quite got it when they asked me if I was “going home for Christmas” and I replied, “I live at home.”

“You go two blocks one way, you're in public housing. You go two blocks the other way, you're at Banana Republic."

While there is much work to be done and there are no guarantees of success, we don’t have to look far for the foundations upon which to build. They are…

Will I die here? I don't know. I have tried living away from here and it does not work.

Ah, you know what? Screw it. Give me the hairshirts wherever they are.

Many a time, I have seen my friend doting on his little seven-year-old half brother, picking him up from school, cooking for him, and keeping his classmates’ junk food at…