Wendell Berry 202
FPR at TAC
Gracy Olmstead attended the FPR conference in Louisville and gives this fine description of the conference and the localist ideals animating FPR. Excerpt: One elderly gentleman sat with his wife…
A Semester of Teaching Sustainability
[Cross-Posted to In Medias Res] The semester has come to an end here at Friends University, and students are leaving campus for their holiday break. Right now I'm grading, and…
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…
An Ancient Legacy of Form: Guardini on Mastery and Nearness
Our dwelling place is the state not of nature but of culture.
The Unmaking and Making of Community
The following is a talk given at the annual conference of The Academy of Philosophy and Letters on June 16, 2012 in Baltimore, MD. In her book The Need for…
You Have Thought Up the Wrong World
In the spring of 1994 my grandmother chose to go off dialysis. Four days later, she was dead. I still remember my parents waking me up in the middle of…
On Being a Worthy Heir of the Agrarian Contrarians
But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”
Frat Boys and the Household
If you follow college "culture" at all, you'll find little new or surprising in the recent discussions of the abusive hazing rituals at Dartmouth, or that the college and its…
A Conversation with Wendell Berry
Purcellville, VA. Readers near Meadville, PA won’t want to miss Loving the Land through Working Forests, a conference hosted by the Foundation for Sustainable Forests (FFSF). The lecture and forestry seminar will feature…
Wes Jackson, Localism, and the Carbon-Based Community
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] A couple of days ago, I had the lucky opportunity to listen up close to Wes Jackson, founder of The Land Institute here in Kansas,…
Wendell Berry to Deliver 2012 Jefferson Lecture
Purcellville, VA. Our readers will be delighted to know that Mr. Wendell Berry has been named the 41st Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities. The 2012 Jefferson Lecture, sponsored by the…
Agrarian Hypocrisy and the Evils of Distributism
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…
Pride and Prejudice and Porn
If we are witnessing the passing of the gentlemen, there is much to lament. Perhaps it’s time for the gentleman to make a comeback.
Baseball: Official Sport of the Front Porch Republic?
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball” –Jacques Barzun Grove City, PA. Opening Day, 2011 Dutifully following the links provided by FPR’s editors, I…
Wendell Berry and the New Urbanism: Agrarian Remedies, Urban Prospects
The problem is a result of the underlying specialization—not of people but of places—for what could be more specialized than designing a town according to discrete zones designated by use?
Eating for Another Fifty (Centuries)
Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson would like you to think of the Farm Bill as an Eating Bill.
Agriculture vs. Agribusiness
A visit to a CAFO makes it clear that to have sustainable agriculture, you have to make sustainable the lives and livelihoods of the people who do the work.
Wendell Berry and the Great Economy
Economics has become a totalizing system claiming the power to explain all things. It is as much a religious system—by another name—as is Berry's Great Economy.