My guest is Erik Bootsma a classical architect who specializes in ecclesiastical architecture. Erik was trained at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture, which focuses on traditional forms of architecture. He and I discuss the role and modern degradation of architec … | Continue reading
One answer from Kingsnorth’s fiction lies in limits. No human, nor all of us put together, is sovereign over the fate of the world, despite the unprecedented power we enjoy over life and death within it. | Continue reading
A short review cannot do justice to the range of reasons visitors to the Porch should read Kingsnorth’s three novels, so I’ll begin simply by saying: Read them. These are thought-provoking, challenging, and linguistically creative novels. | Continue reading
This summer Laurie M. Johnson, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Primary Texts Certificate at Kansas State University, will be leading an online seminar discussing distributist texts and ideas. Several of the readings for the seminar come from last year’s issue o … | Continue reading
Time and time again, in both mythic and recorded history, humans have celebrated the passing of a hardship by gathering together in merriment with good food and drink and song. | Continue reading
“The Turning Point.” Carlo Lancellotti draws on the work of Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce to supplement recent sociological descriptions of our individualistic society: “Del Noce argued that in a radically scientistic-positivistic culture like the one that became dominant … | Continue reading
I’m not canceling Whitman. But my own enthusiasm for his poetry is waning. The poet whose daring versification and daring lifestyle were once seen as the epitome of counter-culture has come to seem to me all too mainstream, the very voice of an age of superficial egotism. | Continue reading
Daniel Elazar was emphatic that a “renewed sense of localism” was essential to America’s future. For Americans, this means renewed intentionality about our local communities, not merely living in one place for a sustained period of time. | Continue reading
How do you measure the beauty, fittingness, and purposefulness of Hewitt, his family, farm, and community? I hope no one tries to innovate an inventory to do it. | Continue reading
The new things we learn about Ernest Hemingway in this documentary not only make him more interesting; they make his writing more remarkable. | Continue reading
“The American Jobs Plan Will Make Our Infrastructure Crisis Worse.” Over at Strong Towns, Charles Marohn has a multi-part essay responding to Biden’s infrastructure bill. Chuck gets to the root issues that real infrastructure investment needs to account for: I read the Fact Sheet … | Continue reading
Rugged individualists need not be atomists; and there are compelling reasons why even Enlightenment liberals should be front porch republicans. | Continue reading
For the sake of human formation and flourishing, it is essential to carve out sanctified spaces of peace and refuge away from the mesmerizing pull of screens. | Continue reading
My guest is Canadian menswear writer and broadcaster Pedro Mendes who operates the website The Hogtown Rake. I have followed Pedro for years on Instagram and also very much enjoyed his podcast series ‘Unbuttoned With Bruce Boyer.’ Pedro has an appreciation for classic men’s cloth … | Continue reading
A few months ago, we posted an invitation to participate in a virtual book discussion. That group is now hosting a discussion of a second book. Below is Zac Blanchard’s announcement of their next book. “Ownership is the path to realizing one’s selfhood. Pity the jobholders.” – Ab … | Continue reading
Canadian author and broadcaster, David Cayley, who conducted two lengthy radio interviews-turned-books with Illich (in 1988 and 2000) and had a decades-long friendship with him, has written a gripping and unconventional biography of this deeply unconventional man. | Continue reading
Whether he takes us to the Texas frontier or to 1970s Houston, his prose never gets in the way of his story. He moves ahead with the precision and simplicity of one of the McMurtry boys telling a story on the front porch of the family ranch house in Archer County, Texas. | Continue reading
“Rooting for the Future.” Current, a new website edited by FPR fellow-travelers Eric Miller and John Fea, is now live. Eric describes his vision for the website in his opening essay. Also among the opening slate of essays is “Rooting for the Future” by Susan McWilliams Barndt, a … | Continue reading
The censorship of slavery no longer dictates Huck’s morality. Unlike Tom, Huck has begun to question his society’s standards, to weigh and consider what is just and right, and I hope that by reading this story, my students may follow him in this difficult endeavor. | Continue reading
The conservationist recognizes that the society we live in, as much as the natural world we live in, was given to us as a gift with the demand that we pass it on to future generations, and therefore it is neither easily discarded nor above reproach. | Continue reading
McMurtry couldn’t quite set the Bowie knife to the scalp of the Western like Cormac McCarthy did the same year, maybe because he knew those people weren’t grotesque caricatures; they were people he’d known and loved. And when he died last week, he was probably the last person in … | Continue reading
Fidelity to place needn’t (and shouldn’t) result in stuckness, a condemnation of ever moving at all. But we must beware falling into that second trap: rejecting roots altogether. | Continue reading
“How Can We Encourage Doctors to Come Home and Serve Well?” Nicholas Brennecke draws on Wendell Berry to consider how the medical profession might encourage young doctors to serve their communities. “Putting Down Roots.” Patrick T. Brown praises Gracy Olmstead’s new book, but he … | Continue reading
Populism can in fact be seen as being precisely a reassertion of democracy against the anti-democratic tendencies of managerial, technocratic elites. | Continue reading
The purpose of politics is to accrue power. Chavez knew this reality, and perhaps his funeral was his last, best opportunity to control the stage and direct the players. | Continue reading
Add the past year on to this already disturbing trend, and such destructive realities have only been further exacerbated. The need for human sociality is not a deficiency, nor is it something that we can just put on hold for an indefinite amount of time. | Continue reading
My guest this episode is Grace Olmstead. Grace has done excellent work for several years on issues of localism, just the sort of thing we like to talk about on Cultural Debris. Like your humble host, she is a devotee of Wendell Berry’s works, and her new book Uprooted is a chroni … | Continue reading
Despite differences that are exacerbated at the national level, we often share significantly more in common with our “enemy” when we interact with them at human scales. | Continue reading
“A Common Good Conservatism for the Common Man.” Anthony Hennen reviews a new edition of The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge and praises Coolidge as “a standard-bearer for a certain strand of American conservatism: A belief in the importance of institutions, the value of free ma … | Continue reading
The Innovation Delusion goes a long way toward demystifying and destigmatizing the ordinary yet essential work of maintenance. | Continue reading
Our society may sometimes be divided on how to define right and wrong, but that has not dampened enthusiasm for identifying wrongdoing. | Continue reading
This is the humbling gift our children offer. If we seek to shape their character, at some point in the journey we’ll find ourselves backed into a corner, faced with our own hypocrisy. | Continue reading
Summary Filmmaker John de Graaf pulls up a chair to discuss his 1997 documentary Affluenza; a forthcoming project on Arizona politician and JFK/LBJ’s Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; the politics of beauty; and a whether John Muir should be cancelled. Singer/songwriter W … | Continue reading
I go forth strangely heartened and even hopeful that I might succeed in my attempt to describe and perhaps even explain the hill country presently looming off our port bow. | Continue reading
“Small-Town Natives Are Moving Back Home.” Gracy Olmstead writes about several college-educated young people choosing to move back to their hometowns, and she points to the work of organizations like Lead for America that are encouraging individuals to do so. “Using Commercial B … | Continue reading
Corrymeela is a dreamscape, a landscape that I marvel at every time I go out there. If conservation consists of loving something—a tract of land, a garden, a wood—then my hope is to love this land even more intensely into its full God-created glory. | Continue reading
Unfortunately, much of what is currently driving the discussion is not reason nor compassion but anger. | Continue reading
Uprooted is partly a memoir of her extended family, partly a paean to a way of life that is both dying and which she never really understood while she grew up in the midst of it (and thus feels the loss of all the more deeply now), and partly a study of the causes of that dying, … | Continue reading
That advocates of year-round DST persist says something about the evolution of American agriculture and how out of touch we collectively have become with the intractable pulse of nature. | Continue reading
“How Local History Can Save America: The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Frederick Douglass.” John W. Miller recommends an essay about the place where Frederick Douglass fought Edward Covey to a standstill. He points to it as an example of the kind of local history that can be pa … | Continue reading
At the heart of Gracy Olmstead's book is the conviction that roots do not just serve the individual person or plant—they also are vital to the health of one’s soil, place, and neighbors. | Continue reading
Even if ‘land’ is less important than actual vote share, this map does point to a very real issue at the heart of American politics: namely that majorities, specifically local majorities, matter very much in our democracy. | Continue reading
Reading the Lutheran Letters today, I cannot help but think about woke capitalism. The fundamental economic and cultural and human issues are obscured by clashes regarding discourse and slight gestures. | Continue reading
It’s time to walk out of our artificially-lit caves and get as close as we possibly can to real presence and real powerlessness, wherever and however these things come into view. | Continue reading
“Arguing with Success.” Rory Groves writes about how his dissatisfaction with the business model of the tech industry led him on a quest for more meaningful work: “Weary (and wary) of the technology industry’s addiction to obsolescence, I began to research more durable ways to wo … | Continue reading
Today I make a COVID resolution: I will learn to be more lamby-like, as Carl would say: to think like a lamb. | Continue reading
As a student of Christian history and an off-and-on conservative, I continue to be confused by the combination of Roman Catholic identity and Front Porch location. The idea of localism is not one that goes readily with the hierarchy of bishops and the universal rule of the papacy … | Continue reading
Minari is haunted by O’Connor, as Chung explores the theme of misfits and “hard to find” good men (and women) that jolt our senses toward who we truly are, including our limitations. | Continue reading