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Wendell Berry 210

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…
Jeffrey Bilbro
February 8, 2018

Why Patrick Deneen Failed

It's already an amazon dot hell best-seller in political theory.
Jason Peters
January 17, 2018

A New FPR Book by John Crowe Ransom

Ransom objected to a false dilemma.
Jason Peters
March 15, 2017

Does Wendell Berry Have Rose-Colored Glasses?

Given the unpopular and uncompromising stands that Wendell Berry takes, it’s only natural that many readers fiercely disagree with him. Some of these disagreements are simply matters of preference. As…
Jeffrey Bilbro
December 31, 2016

The Seer: Seeing Through Wendell Berry’s Eyes

Laura Dunn’s The Seer: A Portrait of Wendell Berry (later retitled Look & See) begins with the blurred lights of cars speeding along freeways and the barren wasteland left by mountaintop removal…
Jeffrey Bilbro
March 8, 2016

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.
Jason Peters
October 20, 2015

A Conversation with Bill Kauffman

I am the illegitimate son of Dorothy Day and H.D. Thoreau.
Jason Peters
July 21, 2015

Wendell Berry Opts Out of the ‘Culture of Violence’

Our Only World: Ten Essays. By Wendell Berry. Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015. In January of 2012, Wendell Berry delivered a speech at Georgetown College that explained his support for legalizing gay…
Jeffrey Bilbro
April 6, 2015

Berry at SAMLA

Jeffrey Bilbro reviews Wendell Berry's appearance at SAMLA.
Jeffrey Bilbro
November 25, 2014

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…
Mark T. Mitchell
November 19, 2014

Four Words to Change the World

Situate the preference where it is, not where it isn’t.
Jason Peters
July 9, 2014

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…
December 14, 2013

History as Parable

History is never merely history.
Jason Peters
September 18, 2013

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…
Mark T. Mitchell
May 28, 2013

An Ancient Legacy of Form: Guardini on Mastery and Nearness

Our dwelling place is the state not of nature but of culture.
Jason Peters
February 26, 2013

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…
Mark T. Mitchell
June 19, 2012

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…
June 11, 2012

On Being a Worthy Heir of the Agrarian Contrarians

But, as Shakespeare wrote, we sometimes “by indirections find directions out.”
Jason Peters
May 2, 2012

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,…
March 8, 2012

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…
Mark T. Mitchell
January 6, 2012

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.
Mark T. Mitchell
April 24, 2011