Building Institutions in an Age of Platforms and Hashtags
When institutions can’t serve their social function, our social problems are harder to address. And a society that cannot adequately respond to its problems is not a society that is cohesive or supportive of the people within it.
Exile as Resettlement: A Review of The Best Poems of Jane...
Jane Kenyon was foremost a poet of place. Not of the State of New Hampshire, though she was its Poet Laureate, but of the much smaller and less abstract corner of it in and around Eagle Pond.
Left (not Liberal) Conservatism (or Communitarianism, if you Prefer): A Restatement
Recently, Tablet Magazine published a lengthy essay by Eric Kaufmann, heralding the revival of "left-conservative" thinking, which the author defined as "a conservative view...
The Domestic Arts: Finding a Quiet Dignity in the Mundane
As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.
Calling For A 21st-Century Magna Carta: A Review of Joel Kotkin’s...
The global middle class of Kotkin’s subtitle must unite with the working class for a new Magna Carta for the 21st Century, one that will, in Lincoln’s words, make us “independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings.”
Free America, The Front Porch Republic, and America’s Decentralist Tradition
The contributors to Free America belonged to one another and to the vision of a humane society, one founded on distributed property. Just because this vision has been drowned out by the purveyors of the bigger-is-better and the latest-is-greatest doesn’t mean a decentralist vision is not worth defending and, even more so, practicing.
Culinary Plagiarist: An Interview with the “Author”
Recently FPR's Bar Jester sat down with the Culinary Plagiarist to discuss a new book by Jason Peters, The Culinary Plagiarist: (Mis)Adventures of a Lusty, Thieving, God-Fearing Gourmand.
Work and Prayer: The Brief Friendship of Thomas Merton and Wendell...
Berry wrote in one of his letters to Merton that “you are one of the few whose awareness of what I’m doing here would be of value to me.” He is acknowledging that he and Merton lead lives of similar mission, lives shaped by work and silence.
For the Hog Killing, 1979 and the Work of Photography
Perhaps the appealing vision of neighborliness that For the Hog Killing, 1979 presents, and the image of agricultural community that it provides, can challenge those of us who are encouraged by the book to channel our memory into the practice of hope.
Tanya Berry’s Faithful Art
Women like Tanya bring artistry and honor to everything they touch: the homes they inhabit, the land they steward, the children they raise. These photographs are testimony to the clear, sharp eye of a woman who is herself an artist—and who brings that artistic gaze to every endeavor she undertakes.