place 200
“For all the Small Schools”: Or, It’s Hoosiers Time
'Tis the season to hie on down to the high school gym. Via First Principles, herewith my piece on Hoosiers, one of the precious few good films ever made about…
Free Riding
Alexandria, VA A few nights ago in Washington D.C., Wendell Berry was among the speakers at what turned out to be a pep rally for opponents of global warming. They…
Homes, New and Old
CLAREMONT, CA. We have become homeowners. This week, my husband and I are moving boxes from our latest rental into a house that we may finally call home. It’s a…
Churches with Porches
JEFFERSON COUNTY, KANSAS. In the comments somewhere below, Prof. Fox mentions the regional artist John Steuart Curry. A fitting topic for my first foray into this space, not only because…
Time-Travel Economics with Jonathan Swift
Rock Island, Illlinois. It’s a little-known fact that many of our finest writers owned time machines and paid frequent visits to the future. Furious John Ruskin (1819-1900), for example, that…
Made in Vermont
BURNED-OVER DISTRICT, NY. It’s town meeting day in the once and future republic of Vermont. Herewith, from the American Conservative, my profile of Frank Bryan, the University of Vermont professor…
A Republic of Front Porches
ALEXANDRIA, VA. Names are important, and few can be more significant than what a new publication calls itself. Perhaps at first greeting the name will give pause, causing the new…
Freedom Among Themselves
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. E.D. Kain had a fine quote from Wendell Berry that provides a good definition of community to start any discussion of place and limits: A community is the mental…