“Poetic Orthodoxy.” Peter Leithart writes about the faith and the conflicted attachment to Wales that animate R. S. Thomas’s poems.
“Why ‘Monsanto’ is No More.” Don’t get your hopes up. As Caitlin Dewey relates, Bayer is simply dropping the unpopular name once their merger is complete. Bigger is always better.
“When the Water Came for Me.” Max Robinson writes about what it was like to be caught up in Maryland floodwaters two weeks ago. There’s a reason this is the second devastating flood to hit his city since 2016:
Another exacerbating factor in the 2016 and 2018 floods is the long-term consequences of excessive land development. As a historic district, Ellicott City is unique in that property owners are extremely limited in the kind of major changes they can make to buildings, some of which are over 200 years old. So developers have gone around the town, peppering the surrounding hillsides with condominiums and apartment complexes. Forested land has been replaced with slick concrete and impervious surfaces that deflect runoff. Rainwater that was once absorbed naturally by the environment has nowhere to go but down.
“Writing the Land and Its Story: An Interview with Paul Kingsnorth, Part 1.” Ragan Sutterfield interviews Paul Kingsnorth about how to narrate a more humble—and true—story of the human place within the world. Read the second part of the interview as well.
“To My Daughter, Who Taught Me Not to Worry about Time.” Elizabeth Bruenig writes a letter to her two-year-old daughter, delightfully subverting the cultural narrative that children take your time and freedom.
“When the Content Police Came for the Babylon Bee.” Adam Ford warns that it’s a bad idea to allow Facebook and Google to control the flow of internet traffic:
Publishers have been worshiping at the altar of the Facebook and Google Information Duopoly for too long. Users have floated along as Facebook and Google have strategically implanted themselves as the gatekeepers of the world’s information.
What can you do about it? Adam suggests going directly to sites you trust rather than scrolling through your Facebook feed. At FPR, we’ve added an email subscription option so new posts show up in your inbox.
“A Missed Opportunity: Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.” Mark David Hall offers commentary on the Supreme Court’s ruling this week.
