“Educating Humans.” I’m relishing the new issue of Plough. Alex Sosler has a great essay on trade schools, Tim Maendel describes one teacher’s creative ways of teaching his students to care for and conserve their place, and there are several other excellent pieces.
“Walk on Air Against Your Better Judgment.” In this remarkable essay, Caitlin Flanagan describes growing up as a family friend of Seamus Heaney. She begins by describing her horror when her parents announced that she and her sister would be baptized into the Catholic church: “But then—like a dream, like a magic fish bone—word arrived from Belfast that Seamus and Marie Heaney were coming down for the event, and that Seamus would write a poem. That changed everything for me. Anything the Heaneys were cool with, I was cool with. They were my idea of what a dazzling couple ought to be, and they were always, always kind to us, and we needed kindness. When Seamus stood up and read the poem, ‘Baptism: for Ellen and Kate Flanagan,’ I accepted everything—all of it, all at once: poetry, God, and myself.”
“The Anti-Social Century.” Derek Thompson charts the growing isolation that Americans choose, and also suffer from: “The individual preference for solitude, scaled up across society and exercised repeatedly over time, is rewiring America’s civic and psychic identity. And the consequences are far-reaching—for our happiness, our communities, our politics, and even our understanding of reality.”
“The Relationship Recession is Going Global.” And in a similar vein, John Burn-Murdoch argues that the primary cause of plummeting birth rates around the globe is that fewer people are marrying or cohabiting: “Had US rates of marriage and cohabitation remained constant over the past decade, America’s total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then. The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.”
“When the Horse Has Left the Barn.” Brian Miller details the delights of caring for a farm and its animals through a cold, wet winter: “There are moments during winter (and this is promising to be a real old-fashioned one) when running a farm can seem at its best a poorly thought-out choice for a way of life.”
“Does America Still Do Federalism?” Tony Woodlief reviews American Federalism Today and recalls the goods that federalism is intended to serve: “If America is no longer capable of federalism, the destruction of self-governance by relentless federal expansion arguably shoulders a portion of the blame.”
“Cui Bono?” Alan Jacob’s ongoing series of reflections on the family is quite good: “Cui bono? When the family is weakened and children are cut adrift (morally and intellectually, if not physically) from their parents, the therapists benefit, the pharmaceutical industry benefits, the medical-industrial complex benefits, the social-media companies benefit, the employers benefit — but, in our current system, all of this is to say that the primary beneficiary is the state, especially any state with a competent “whole of society” approach to achieving its ends.”
“FTC Sues John Deere for ‘unfairly’ Raising Repair Costs on Farm Equipment.” Justine Calma reports on a new front in the legal battle over the right to repair: “The FTC and attorneys general for Illinois and Minnesota filed suit today in a long-running fight for the right to repair — a battle that’s become more heated as Deere increasingly incorporated software into farm equipment. The complaint accuses John Deere of “decades” of unlawful practices that forced farmers to turn to the company’s own network of authorized dealers for repairs.”
“Los Angeles Burns.” Barrett Avner responds to the LA fires as someone who grew up in that city of extremes and contrasts: “There are all sorts of pet causes to blame, but to me it’s the ego-image, as the America-whisperer Baudrillard pointed out decades ago. Building and caring for infrastructure, living within limits—this entails sacrificing both social capital and private profit. In a place where it’s rewarded to be a 24/7 manager of one’s own appearance, what incentives are there to act in the benefit of the surroundings? Nobody is asking for the complete elimination of natural dangers; fires are a fact of life. My heart breaks for Los Angeles, for the people who are suffering there, for the intergenerational families who have lost everything. Although people have pulled together and are helping each other, many are grieving with only the image of a place left, an image of a place that was already built on fantasy.”
“The Catholic Worker Pushes the Limits.” Laurie Johnson weights the possibilities and tensions in the movement that Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin founded over 90 years ago: “The politics of Jesus calls us to reject violence, wealth, and power and to seek community and serve each other, especially the poor. One movement responding to the gospel in this way is the Catholic Worker. As someone involved with the Catholic Worker, I’ve seen the fruits of this kind of discipleship. But my involvement has also brought me face-to-face with the limits of what we can achieve in the current social order.”
