Is there a direct causal connection between America’s embrace of succulents and semi-succulents as houseplants-of-choice and the conspicuous mass movement of Americans to states with the least amount of rainfall? Maybe not, but the correlation gives us strong cause to consider. | Continue reading
But the dark events of that afternoon have remained with me and have prompted a question that I have often wrestled with, fruitfully, I think, but never to a clear decision: Lacking a proper foundation in kickball, what sort of culture, if any at all, could flourish in a Newton, … | Continue reading
There is something new in Doestoevsky's insights into the psychology of “the Human Being,” beyond the Church Fathers, or at least that's the case made. If this is true, especially in the light of the complete mental breakdown happening all around us, shouldn't we be redirecting o … | Continue reading
“The Corruption of the Best: On Ivan Illich.” Geoff Shullenberger takes the occasion of David Cayley’s intellectual biography of Ivan Illich to offer a reassessment of Illich’s thought. In particular, Shullenberger explains Illich’s work on gender, which earned him opprobrium in … | Continue reading
There will be a temptation for many to say: “Good. Roe is gone. Now the rest is none of my business.” It would be wise to remember this disinterest in our communities is what enabled a technocratic judiciary to impose Roe. To perfect our nation and its communities, we must balanc … | Continue reading
Brown stresses the need to pay attention to “what God has said, and nature is his most primordial and exoteric word”; after all, within this word, human nature is situated too. But “[l]ess and less in our time and place do we hear the most primordial of God’s words—the song, one … | Continue reading
For all the enhanced resolution of our universe Webb brings, for all the material analysis this new device supplies to scientists’ burgeoning cosmic databases, informing the denizens of Earth just what the universe is made of, NASA is not one whit closer to explaining what the un … | Continue reading
“How Foreign Private Equity Hooked New England’s Fishing Industry.” Will Sennott has an in-depth report on the ways the local owners and fishermen in New England are increasingly squeezed out by large capital investments from overseas corporations: “Blue Harvest and other compani … | Continue reading
Life is inherently unpredictable and requires engagement without certainty of outcome. It also often requires patience. No matter how many labor-saving and time-bending devices we create, we will never exist in a completely predictable and easy environment. “Convenience” ceases t … | Continue reading
For readers exhausted by the seemingly intractable erosion of society by powerful forces, Perzanowski, has, thankfully, included many tales of heroic and insurgent successes sure to inspire readers, and his treatment of cultural history related to planned obsolescence, consumeris … | Continue reading
Siloam Springs, AR. Earlier this month Americans celebrated yet another Fourth of July, marking 246 years of independence. As we approach the country’s semiquincentennial, talk of nationalism and patriotism is all the rage – namely, whether these are virtues or vices in an increa … | Continue reading
“A Way of Life Being Lost.” Ruth Conniff visits Henry County, KY to talk with Wendell Berry and Mary Berry about rural America, the work of the Berry Center, and models for healthy farm economies. “Seed Oils and Bad Science.” Carmel Richardson narrates the history of producing, m … | Continue reading
Continetti’s rendition is distinctive in its focus on the tension and recurrent clashes between an increasingly radicalized populist grass roots and movement elites committed to a principled small government constitutionalism. Academic historians of the movement will be skeptical … | Continue reading
In our day, we cannot ourselves see the heavens; we can only see pixelated images of heaven produced by computer screens. In this respect, we already live in virtual reality. | Continue reading
The real challenge is to make the wisdom of the past live in the present. Such work is analogous to sprouting a seed, playing a song, cooking and enjoying a family recipe. | Continue reading
“Syria’s Seed Planters.” Plough’s Summer 2022 issue on “Hope in Apocalypse” has many essays on this important virtue. One of the most moving, I think, is Mindy Belz’s account of Assyrians who seek to restore homes and communities in the midst of unimaginable devastation and hards … | Continue reading
No one even tried to keep me. The dead, not an argumentative sort to begin with, never had the chance. The living, God bless them, had been so thoroughly tutored by modern life that they could, in the same breath, say how wonderful was my “great opportunity” to go and how sad the … | Continue reading
Wiley, throughout his book, handles the paradoxes and tensions of Tolkien’s text not as inconsistencies to be brushed aside, but rather as brushstrokes of a master artist at work. For such a meticulous and calculated author, an author who spent decades crafting his mythology, why … | Continue reading
Dr. Greg Hillis of Bellarmine University in Louisville. He is author of the recent book Man of Dialogue: Thomas Merton’s Catholic Vision from Liturgical Press. Dr. Hillis and I discuss Merton’s reputation, his role as novice master at the Abbey of Gethsemani, his interaction with … | Continue reading
With simple elements of bread and wine, the church, then and now, celebrates the memory of Christ’s death by partaking of the sacrament of his body and blood. Ignatius wants to share in the suffering and thereby the glory of his Lord. He knows there are worse things than death - … | Continue reading
Today the man described as “Issaquah’s Thoreau” is largely forgotten. His books have been out of print for years and the anniversary of what would have been his 100th birthday in 2020 passed without a single mention in any local newspapers. An unfitting end for a man who poured s … | Continue reading
Katharine Hayhoe is a professor at Texas Tech and the Chief Scientist for The Nature Conservancy. Her most recent book is Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World. Dr. Hayhoe, a Christian, swings by the Porch to discuss faith and science; effe … | Continue reading
Establishments like The Bookstore, when at their best, are not exclusively or perhaps even primarily in the business of providing people with printed texts. They are places in which proprietors like Tannenbaum foster community in the context of a shared love of the written word. … | Continue reading
Anyone involved in Christian education, from primary levels to higher education, including teachers and administrators, will benefit from contemplating Donnelly’s reimagined trivium, even if that contemplation requires rigorous effort at times. John Milton concludes his seventeen … | Continue reading
I hope pastors read this book. But more than that, I hope it finds its way into the hands of examining chaplains and board elders, of district superintendents and seminary principals. They can do much to shape a culture where pastor-readers become more common. | Continue reading
In my generation, careerism, which thrives off a desire for prestige, intertwines with influencer activism, which grows from a desire for popularity. Together, these modern forms threaten the desire for familial and communal life—an aspiration traditionally associated with conser … | Continue reading
The 1619 Project states that its purpose is to remember the history of slavery and racism that American schools have sometimes tried to forget. But mostly it teaches students the wrong way to go about remembering. It abuses remembering to promote forgetting America’s history of r … | Continue reading
The idea presiding in Houellebecq is that the worship of individual autonomy destroys love. If love is the meaning of life, then a society bent on autonomy for its members will tend to rob life of meaning. “Once you’ve said it, it sounds obvious,” Houellebecq said in another cont … | Continue reading
I interrupted his weed-pulling to gently rebuke him for perceived carelessness regarding his health, but like the mother of Christ, I was the one needing correction—for Pastor was simply “about his Father’s business.” As if to act out our philosophy, he was a “good shepherd,” and … | Continue reading
We academics unfortunately often fall into the trap of pride (particularly of the self-involved, self-satisfying, institutional kind), and hence a humbling such as this conference delivered was probably much needed. I have a Christian duty, as an educator and as a member of a Chr … | Continue reading
For many Americans, especially those on the coasts, in cities, and with advanced educations, life has improved in recent decades. Meanwhile, in many rural and interior parts of the country, economic growth has stagnated or declined, along with the population. While America has im … | Continue reading
We live in a society where lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride have been commercialized. When the self and its desires are everywhere celebrated, to contain the self is a form of revolt. There begins the path. There begins the search for the eternal things. The f … | Continue reading
To the tomb, all life hastens. But while death is ineluctable, the growing good of the world is not. There is an intrinsic vulnerability to civilization (and parenthood), in large part because the beings who comprise it have the capacity both to sustain and destroy it; to be “the … | Continue reading
Despite Americans’ instinctive openness, decades of deadly overdoses and mass shooting victims remind them that there have to be boundaries. The difficulty of controlling protests in Russia and China reminds them that closing down too hard can destabilize the government’s hold on … | Continue reading
This Realness, a touch of authentic mythology--much like Niggle who finally saw the Real Tree he had modeled his painting after throughout his life without knowing it--comes alive when the legends are approached the way they were intended to be: as if they were true. Here Myth be … | Continue reading
I’d always wondered what woodland flowers had to do with morels and fishing. I’d also marveled about how robins knew when to return north or questioned why certain mayfly imitations work better than others during the opening weekend of trout season. What did one have to do with t … | Continue reading
My infrequent episodes of bringing death to animals have always taken an emotional toll on me. Making a weekly trip to the slaughterhouse for over a decade, as Comis did, seems bound to leave a mark. Can such a wound be redeemed or is the purpose of this pain to dissuade us from … | Continue reading
Mark Mitchell’s book is the latest title published under the FPR Books imprint. If this excerpt whets your appetite, do order a copy of Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class. It is the crisis of the middle class, and not simply the … | Continue reading
I’ll be taking the month of June off email and, for the most part, the Internet. FPR will continue publishing essays while I’m away–we have some substantive essays on tap–but my weekly Water Dipper posts will be on hiatus until sometime in July. I’ll be enjoying some good books w … | Continue reading
We may heap much of the blame or praise upon generals and czars and presidents, but they are rarely in the trenches. We may want to avoid taking responsibility for what happens, but big things often require many people working together. Individuals alone do not shape history. It … | Continue reading
A number of Werntz’s suggested practices—e.g., regular use of corporate and pre-written prayers, and identifying with a classic confession of faith rather than a mission statement—are already common in many, more traditional Protestant churches and in Roman Catholic churches. Ind … | Continue reading
Dominican Friar Fr. Gregory Pine is a host of the podcast Godsplaining and frequently appears on Pints With Aquinas. He is author of the new book Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly published by Our Sunday Visitor. Fr. Pine and I discuss the idea of prudence, its philosophi … | Continue reading
Woods may be Californian by birth, and a Floridian by residence, but I believe there’s something in his latest comeback capable of stirring the soul of even the most reticent, celebrity-wary Middle American. I would never say that Tiger is us—he’s rich and famous and talented bey … | Continue reading
“The Colorado River is in Crisis, And It’s Getting Worse Every Day.” In a beautifully produced, well-illustrated essay, Karin Brulliard journeys down the Colorado River and highlights the communities and ecosystems that depend on its dwindling flow. “Is Reading Fiction a Waste of … | Continue reading
The old neighbourhoods are not coming back amid the glass and concrete of today’s Shanghai. Half of the Andean countryside is beginning to look less like villages and more like mining settlements whose denizens want to leave. And the last few years have shown that liberty and tru … | Continue reading
It is a hard task to learn to plant roots in a place from which you know you will be uprooted. It is also the task that we, mirroring Israel in Jeremiah 29, are called to do. Through the process of planting gardens, marrying, having children, raising our children, and being plant … | Continue reading
All of the biases, all of the bloodlessness, and all the banalities of Tractor Wars, I suggest, are the products of a whole way of thinking about technology, agriculture and the economy, one that values invention over implementation or use, innovation over maintenance or care, an … | Continue reading
“Not That Brothers K.” Ken Sundet Jones praises David James Duncan’s brilliant novel on the thirtieth anniversary of its publication: “It’s about American angst, familial drama, and Seventh Day Adventist questions of theodicy. Not only that, it’s got baseball and war, along with … | Continue reading