“Watch the Great Fall.” Paul Kingsnorth acknowledges his own tendencies toward nostalgia and draws on some fine poets to articulate the proper posture toward decline: “The theologies of Zen, Orthodoxy, Mark Anthony and Robinson Jeffers differ wildly, and yet they alight, all of t … | Continue reading
Kevin Gutzman is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University. He has published half a dozen books on Jefferson, Madison, and the Constitution. His latest book is The Jeffersonians. Cultural Debris Patreon – Support the podcast! Cultural Debris logo by Rachael Sin … | Continue reading
Any reformation requires a standard. How else could you measure progress? The standard of reviving classical learning should plainly include those revered authors who inspired and contributed to that tradition. | Continue reading
The After Virtual conference podcast series closes with a focus on civics and cemeteries. Mark Mitchell, author of Plutocratic Socialism, talks on, well, plutocrats and socialism (plus the importance of property ownership to maintaining the republic). Rachel Ferguson, author of … | Continue reading
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions, because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams, instead of the tough fiber of the human heart…. A friend therefore is a sort of paradox in nature…. Let him be to thee forever a sort of beautiful enemy, untamable, devout … | Continue reading
I am not now lamenting my station, which is a kind of existential loneliness, though at times I do. I’m putting it down in writing because I know for certain that in this loneliness I’m far from alone. | Continue reading
How else does their work inspire you to think differently about your own relationship to your own places? Take action in your own property, if you have it, and in your local community. | Continue reading
“Ronald Blythe Obituary.” Patrick Barkham remembers a great localist writer: “Never out of print and read and studied around the world, Akenfield made Blythe famous and perhaps overshadowed the many other fruits of his long years of writing–short stories, poems, histories, novels … | Continue reading
By contrast, developing skill through direct contact with nature increases our confidence, efficacy, and even patience. Although fry cooks have a shorter learning curve than motorcycle mechanics or hockey players, all three experience the freedom of agency and causal influence on … | Continue reading
Having experienced pregnancy and childbirth with both a traditionally trained OB/GYN and with midwives, the philosophical differences are abundantly clear. | Continue reading
Being a teacher is a demanding job, whether in a college, school, or home setting. It requires tremendous energy, responsiveness, and mental flexibility. It requires that you, the teacher, also be willing to let yourself be taught. | Continue reading
Though the metaphor sounds alarmist, an unimaginable tsunami is barreling down on a complacent world. We may have time to adjust, who knows? | Continue reading
I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires. | Continue reading
My guest is Raj Bhakta. Raj is a true practitioner of the art of cultural debris. From founding one of the first premium whiskey brands, Whistle Pig—based out of Vermont, of all places—to buying an actual college at auction, Raj is not one to limit himself. We talk about all of t … | Continue reading
Accompanying the poor or inhabiting their number, the honest among us recognize our own fundamental impoverishment. Bernanos, a father and husband who long depended on others for sustenance, inhabited the paradox of Christianity. | Continue reading
The reader may be none the wiser regarding the definition of fascism, but this book affords a wisdom and moderation of sorts all the same, one that stems from the awareness that in popular rhetoric, fascism is a word full of sound and fury, signifying not much. | Continue reading
Changing the phrase “field work” to “practicum” is, without more comprehensive action, a perfect illustration of cheap grace. It costs USC nothing more than some online eye-rolling to do. | Continue reading
What keeps me on one side rather than the other is my belief that if we had been living more fully in that real world, a lot of what we call “the pandemic” simply would not have occurred (perhaps including the virus itself, if we accept the increasingly compelling theory that it … | Continue reading
To know a particular hometown, with its triumphs and tragedies, its gains and losses, its names and namesakes, its heroes and eccentrics, its myths and peculiarities, its landmarks and symbols, its deliberations and disputes, is to know a part of America and to deepen one’s commi … | Continue reading
Nature is never pure in these poems; it is always responding to human care or lack-of-care, commodified, and, indeed, turned into a symbol by the poet herself. Emerson doesn't hide the grief that haunts this book; it is about the death of a child. | Continue reading
The penultimate session from the FPR conference After Virtual: The Art of Recovering Lost Goods addresses health. Philosopher Adam Smith from the University of Dubuque and medical doctor Brian Volck, author of Attending Others: A Doctor’s Education in Bodies and Words, take on … | Continue reading
We taste myth when we read Piranesi, because in the story, like in Barfield’s exploration of how the meaning of words changes over time, we are taken out of our modern sensibilities (if only for a moment), and thrust into an ancient mode of thinking. | Continue reading
Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the vast expanses of these United States, or at least they think they do. | Continue reading
I’m helping to lead a study abroad trip in Rome for the next couple of weeks, so the Water Dipper will be on hiatus. But I plan to return at the end of January. “Wendell Berry Book Club.” Ashley Colby is convening an online book club to discuss Berry’s Need to Be Whole. Lots of [ … | Continue reading
The memory of pain has the power to protect our joy. The land, the place, the names, the people; these are what connect us to today and to every past day. | Continue reading
My guest is Os Guinness, long a resident of the Washington, D.C. area, Guinness was born in China and educated at Oxford. He is a prolific author, most recently of The Great Quest and Zero Hour America, both from IVP. In our conversation we discuss the cultural crisis in America … | Continue reading
To nurture small-scale local agriculture is to oppose the Maoist, Stalinesque, Hitlerian, Huxlian, Schwabian, Gatesian push to monopolize global food production. My cows plod the Underground. And I plod along with them. | Continue reading
Parker’s Winters in the World is an education fit for the Humanities and lay person who wishes to expand upon what it means to exist as humans in a world full of wyrd winters. | Continue reading
People often want to ignore the complexity of that process, downplay how often interests conflict, and avoid confrontation. In this essay, I suggest we throw ourselves into the mess and hash it out—respectfully, in public, based on shared intellectual standards. | Continue reading
“Police Seize on COVID-19 Tech to Expand Global Surveillance.” A team of AP reporters—Garance Burke, Josef Federman, Huizhong Wu, Krutika Pathi and Rod McGuirk—detail how COVID surveillance technologies are being used in countries around the world to track and control citizens: “ … | Continue reading
As populations and employments shift, the South reflects transitions affecting the nation as a whole. Wherever we are, the place around us is changing. Yet it also has a history of its own. | Continue reading
J. R. R. Tolkien imagined a society characterized by people who care for one another and their natural spaces, cultivating human and ecological flourishing in their communities. | Continue reading
The reason I lament the loss of home visits is because in the doctor’s journey to see the patient as a person (which is essential to the therapeutic relationship) the home is a rich environmental shortcut to the core of the person. | Continue reading
In order to reconcile competing and hostile cultures in our current, chaotic milieu, it is necessary to forge a politics of honesty and integrity. As hinted by The Wordhord’s emphasis on daily life, the true and good political life begins with the small things of home life. | Continue reading
“Generations.” Plough’s new issue is out, and while I’m waiting to read it until my physical copy shows up, Peter Mommsen’s opening editorial, probing the yearning for roots and the ways in which we avoid or cultivate these, whets my appetite: “The “pervasive rootlessness” that [ … | Continue reading
One can have a very merry Christmas with great simplicity. And maybe, thinking of charity toward our less fortunate neighbors, modeling simplicity has its virtues. | Continue reading
The happiest boomers I know love nothing more than talking with their old friends about their new grandchildren. So, my holiday recipe for fighting loneliness is lots of face-to-face talking–with strangers, family, and everyone between. | Continue reading
Chris Arnade, the keynote speaker at the After Virtual conference, has traded global finance for skid row photography. Chris discusses his journey from Wall Street board rooms to a booth at McDonald’s and the associated rejection of careerism and self-definition. Speaker: Chri … | Continue reading
So leave if you must, but perhaps not today. Stop and consider all the ways you can stay. | Continue reading
Manchester, NH. The prospect of moving from our little cottage in New Hampshire causes me great pain. Why? Because I am a creature of place and my surroundings, the people, the landscape, the history—all play into my sense of the importance of where I live. This place and its con … | Continue reading
“I’m a Stranger Here Myself.” FPR contributor Brian Kaller has a moving essay on returning to his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri for a few weeks this summer after being away for many years. Much has changed, and he muses about some of the causes: “Living on the internet isolates … | Continue reading
It is meant to reference, to supplement, but also to circumvent. Manchester doesn’t do smog or spinning jennies anymore. It’s a friendly city. Come on in. | Continue reading
But the promise of the coming of the Messiah is that all these animals will be changed from enemies of the human race into its friends, or at least comfortable and tolerant neighbors. This promise sheds, furthermore, a different light on the present discomfort that some of us may … | Continue reading
Clapp’s ambitious study attempts a great deal within a comparatively brief compass. Unfortunately, some topics suffer as a result...How can one best understand the tension between individual moral responsibility (rooted in Protestantism) and an individual liberty which rejects ex … | Continue reading
We can agree that many technological “advances” have objectively done more harm than good, in terms of the human condition as well as the Earth, and that we face a bleak scenario of looming catastrophe. But this doesn’t mean that there is no way out. | Continue reading
“No Snowflakes are the Same. These Stunning Close-up Photos are Proof.” Amudalat Ajasa explains how Jason Persoff captures amazing images of snowflakes and showcases some of his photos. If you’re fascinated by snowflake photography, you may enjoy Snowflake Bentley, a beautiful Ca … | Continue reading
The rivalry we’re experiencing goes deeper than symptoms, political principles, and even the need for responsive, wise leaders. Indeed, it may bypass principles and wisdom altogether. But to explain it, I need the help of anthropologist and literary critic René Girard. | Continue reading
It is a trouble that visits us all: our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but kingdoms and cultures and homes rise and fall. Being willingly bound in devotion to the Creator redeems that trouble forever. | Continue reading