There is a significant difference between staring at a computer screen and seeing the world through a porch screen. Hailey emphasizes the benefits of seeing from the “threshold between stability and precariousness,” which is nothing like viewing the world from the comfort of a co … | Continue reading
For Quinones, the twin opioid and meth epidemics have their origins in the destruction of community. The decline of local institutions creates a vacuum of isolation and hopelessness in which drugs can gain a foothold, despite all efforts to keep them out. Reading The Least of Us, … | Continue reading
“Spring 2022.” The Berry Center’s spring newsletter has several good pieces, including Wendell Berry’s note of gratitude for the continued practice of local subsistence, in this case manifest during a hog butchering. “The Pandemic Gave Small Farmers an Upper Hand for Once. Now Wh … | Continue reading
By reducing the value of words and, hence, constitutions, common good constitutionalism seems even more likely to veer into the dangerous realm of personal preference-based decision-making. Many figures could be clothed by the “loose fitting garment” that Vermeule has tailored. B … | Continue reading
If only I had the patience of trees; if only I let time inch me, push me, stretch me ever upward, defying gravity’s pull. My demand for instant responses mocks the good work of time. Trees chasten my fleeting desires that dart hither and thither by slowly pressing, intentionally … | Continue reading
Jessica Hooten Wilson is author of the new book The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints from Brazos Press. Jessica is a professor at the University of Dallas and has written previously on Walker Percy and Fydor Dostoevesky. She current … | Continue reading
Christians, then, have the proper perspective from which to read literature. We can see the profound truths of literature, be they ancient or modern, “pagan” or Christian. Furthermore, we can also rebut those scholars and interpreters who would rather praise the rage of Achilles … | Continue reading
The majority of Americans want peace and prosperity and cooperation. The biggest question is—and this is a question that The Batman does not answer, except by implication—where are the heroes willing to build this honest, just, and prosperous society? | Continue reading
“Repair and Remain.” Kurt Armstrong shares some wisdom about fidelity that he’s picked up along a winding life: “for twelve years now I’ve had a hybrid operation, juggling a one-man autodidact home-repair business and part-time lay ministry at a little Anglican church in Winnipeg … | Continue reading
Christ touches. With his hands he heals the sick, opens mouths, unstops ears, blesses the children, and raises the dead. And ultimately it is the marks in Christ’s hands that fully and definitively reveal his true identity in his post-Resurrection appearance to Thomas. Christ him … | Continue reading
Look at our priests or bishops now. Do they seem any more advanced in the cure than anybody else? Some do. But so does the guy who took the snow tires off my car last week, and I don’t know if he’s ever darkened the doors of a Church. I just know that he had an air of spiritual f … | Continue reading
While in my current brief stint in D.C., I am often given a puzzled look when I tell someone that I am going back to the farm: “You’ve made it to D.C., haven’t you? Why would you go back?” I’m going back because the farm and all it means are more important than anything I can do … | Continue reading
“Will Technology Enhance or Deplete Relationships?” Matthew Loftus draws lessons on electronic medical records and our broader use of technology from What is Not Sacred?, a book by the Tanzanian priest Laurenti Magesa: “Our local affections will have universal implications for ho … | Continue reading
We have a date, location, and keynote for our fall conference. Stay tuned for a full schedule and registration information, and make plans to join us! | Continue reading
The dominant lens through which our world views mathematics is undeniable. Yet as we careen down this path, we feel a dearth of important and weighty things in our life–community, relationship, connectedness, and alignment on how to approach the greatest tragedies of our day. Per … | Continue reading
My guest is art historian Danielle Oteri who wrote a wonderful article published in The Paris Review about the Unicorn Tapestries in the Met Cloisters. Danielle and I discuss mystery and wonder, angels and unicorns. And a security guard named Howie. Oh, and a squirrel. Cultural D … | Continue reading
Poetry is the creative ordering of words to bring forth the fruits of the human heart and intellect. The poet is called to lose himself, so to speak, in listening to inspiration, a power that is classically understood to be beyond him. Similarly, the farmer is called to lose hims … | Continue reading
“The Death Spiral of an American Family.” Eli Saslow profiles a family in Detroit who are at loose ends after the death of their patriarch, a man who had done well for himself and yet ended up dying with not even enough money to pay for his funeral. It is a difficult story, yet t … | Continue reading
The day will come when parents in the poorest communities will be able to say that they cannot imagine a better place to raise their children than in their neighborhoods surrounded by family and friends. This will not happen because government bureaucracies finally use the correc … | Continue reading
On return trips to Illinois, or when talking to relatives on the phone, I can tell the difference. Life is a little slower where I grew up, and the people are often more polite and considerate of others. I know from experience how considerate they can be. | Continue reading
Reviving campus newspapers and radio stations and student-led clubs, and putting resources behind them, could create more space for speech, help foster campus community, and model a level of comfort with differing views. The classroom may still need adjustment, but antagonistic w … | Continue reading
People with cosmic self-respect can reconcile themselves with the possibility that there is no conductor, and that after death comes only silence. And they can muster the strength to keep listening for the fragments, to keep imperfectly piecing together the rhythm of the music, a … | Continue reading
“Democrats are Kicking Rural America to the Curb. Again.” Art Cullen gives Democrats a tongue-lashing for their plans to change the primary schedule and give less influence to rural voters in Iowa and elsewhere: “Iowa, like Ohio, used to be purple. Now both are ruby red, in part … | Continue reading
Can a renewed or more explicitly acknowledged federalism keep us from the whirlpool of secession? We should all hope so. But what if we have already been sucked in? | Continue reading
My guest this episode is Allen Mendenhall, Associate Dean and Grady Rosier Professor in the Sorrell College of Business at Troy University, and author of the book Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature, and Culture from St. Augustine’s Press. We discuss his family’s connection … | Continue reading
One gets the clear sense from Montás that these voices from the past are not just texts with trivial information, but real presences, real friends who have had a significant role in shaping, forming Montás’ life. And if any core program is going to work, it needs men and women li … | Continue reading
Montás deserves great credit for illuminating the perverse priorities of American higher education throughout Rescuing Socrates. It must be admitted, however, that the book suffers from occasional missteps. A fuller engagement with the history of the liberal arts than Montás must … | Continue reading
“Scruton Makes His Case.” John G. Grove reviews a new collection of Scruton’s essays and finds that they display his optimistic “pessimism[, which] paradoxically leads us to fields of hopeful labor by turning our eyes away from the lofty and unattainable dreams of the visionary t … | Continue reading
If “church” is the body of Christ in its local manifestation, where each and every member is connected to one another and everyone knows each other’s names and stories, have cried together and laughed together, worshipped together, served together, prayed together, argued togethe … | Continue reading
If you're looking intentionally at your locality, wanting to make it more just and more civil and more communal--with, say, better food practices, more responsible energy usage, and social arrangements premised upon love and respect rather than financial and racial advantage--wel … | Continue reading
The paper supply chain turmoil has come for Local Culture. Once the order of paper arrives, the magazines will be printed and mailed to subscribers. They are hoping a new shipment arrives next week, but apparently lots of large printers are now stockpiling paper, which means ther … | Continue reading
It is perhaps that personal search for contentment that makes this book a notable contribution to the literature on the American racial problem: Milliner’s “penitent Midwest regionalism” is first of all an attempt to heal within himself the disease and discontentment produced in … | Continue reading
“How Tech Despair Can Set You Free.” In a rich essay on Jacques Ellul, Samuel Matlack faces the dangers of our technological society squarely and considers the possibilities for hope: “‘You cannot talk about hope,’ [Ellul] writes. ‘The question is how to live it.’ The reason you … | Continue reading
Harvard Law School produces many of our future rulers, and it may be better for us if aspiring federal administrators learn from Vermeule at least the presumptive desirability of honoring local institutions. Yet Vermeule would only be teaching them a carefully-regulated localism … | Continue reading
Contemplation of God is paying attention to what demands one’s attention—more than information discovered or expression felt. Contemplating art can be a means, a sort of preparatory practice, of contemplating the Beautiful One from which all beauty is derivative. | Continue reading
We have lost something of great value in forgetting the work of John Dos Passos. He was a man who knew who deserved his sympathy, and his work followed his instincts. Dos Passos didn’t follow a line; he followed reality. | Continue reading
“Why Putin is no Hitler.” Daniel McCarthy warns against falling into wrongheaded patterns of thinking as war takes place in Europe: “Certain reflexes remain irresistible in Washington, not only among politicians but in the media, too. One of these is a tendency to see every confl … | Continue reading
It is not because I bear Harvard any ill will that I wish we could all just shut up about it already. Rather, I am concerned that our national obsession with elite colleges is making many of us miserable, while at the same time distracting us from parts of the higher education la … | Continue reading
Perhaps this, above all, is the work of nature writing: to bring the wild and the domestic together and to reveal the mystery at the heart of both. That Springer’s book consistently does this is enough to commend it as a constructive entry in this vexed genre. | Continue reading
I have Orthodox friends that find our little chapel concerning, and they are certainly right that a casual use of icons for decorative enhancement is to be avoided. Still, their chief complaint should be directed to the monks of Mount Athos who, infused with God’s flagrant genero … | Continue reading
“Wendell Berry’s Advice for a Cataclysmic Age.” In a surprisingly sympathetic essay—surprising given its appearance in the New Yorker, a publication not known for its sympathy with agrarians from rural Kentucky–Dorothy Wickenden describes a recent visit to the Berry’s and how his … | Continue reading
Think not, then, of the ubiquitous screens and hideous architecture and suburban metastasis and microwave dinners. Think rather of Eric Voegelin’s famous quip—Voegelin, who said that “no one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crisis of a society; on the contrary, everyone i … | Continue reading
Aaron Weinacht’s book is a needed corrective to the public misperception of Ayn Rand as radical capitalist. She was, first and foremost, a radical nihilist. Insofar as Rand embraced capitalism, it was secondary to her axiomatic nihilism embodied best in John Galt. | Continue reading
At a time when ideologies and slogans often pull us away from the difficult task of finding realistic solutions and building a world together, the approach of these authors reveals the necessity of digging deep to confront the facts as they are and recognizing the complexity of c … | Continue reading
If there is to be the equivalent of a Reagan following President Biden, he or she will face a more difficult task than the one leaders faced in 1980. Reagan only had to deal with the political ghost of Nixon, but a candidate in 2024 will have to deal with a flesh and blood Trump … | Continue reading
“Big Business Games the Supply Chain” Rose Adams describes how companies like Amazon and Walmart are better positioned to profit from supply chain snarls while small businesses struggle acutely. Yet these small businesses play a critical role in the economic and cultural life of … | Continue reading
We cannot sustain the rhetoric of conservation and sustainability if our society remains fixated on ideas of economic and technological progress. We cannot become a people who cherish the land and seas if we continue to expect an unsustainable degree of material affluence. | Continue reading
Attunement, attachment, engagement, and identification are all absolutely necessary for properly considering artworks of all kinds. However, I struggle to identify the application of Felski's argument. Perhaps it is because, as a high school teacher in a classical school, I feel … | Continue reading