“Home Is Where One Starts From.” J.C. Scharl praises art that comes from and in turn feeds a commitment to a particular place: “Art should touch our wills; it should move us to live and act differently. But in...
We live in fractured days, lacking in harmony, civility, and comity. “Comity,” an old word for courtesy and kindness, is related etymologically to the Sanskrit word for “smile.” As it often does, etymology here beautifully illuminates a reality, in this case about both kindness and smiling: they unceasingly bring warmth, joy, and a smile to both giver and receiver.
Wendell Berry's fiction shows what relationships look like with skin on—how real relationships are enacted between people. As the characters who inhabit the fictional town Port William interact, they demonstrate how individuals can either perpetuate or obstruct meaningful relationships. The lives of two characters in particular, Hannah and Burley Coulter, have a lot to teach us about relationships and liberty. Together, Hannah and Burley demonstrate how caring for people in committed relationships requires moving beyond personal liberty for the sake of the other.
Why does my third child, my little son whom I mention above, need me to be in physical contact with him while he reads? Because it helps him feel warm and safe, I imagine, and so he is not as afraid of making mistakes. Alternative educators recognized this in the classroom decades ago: that children read better with an adult’s arm around them, or while piled onto soft pillows with a couple of friends.
I did some research with the help of a “dumb phone finder” which told me the functions, network compatibilities, and reviews of the available flip phones and other simplicity-oriented devices. I identified one that was an acceptable price, was still able to run one or two of the apps that I actually do need, and was compatible with my network (or so I thought).
“George Scialabba’s Prejudice for Progress.” Come for Sam Adler-Bell’s summary of Scialabba’s appraisal of modernity, stay for his paean to the way Scialabba models what it means to be an “amateur” intellectual: “for Scialabba, the essence of intellectual and...
County Highway is not county-specific. It’s for all of America outside major cities. Well, outside of New York and Los Angeles, for sure. In the second issue, there’s a piece about unions in Las Vegas. Another “outsider” voice comes from Miami, though he travels to Puerto Rico. It’s “the rest of America,” but it’s not necessarily rural America, despite the squirrel recipe.
Gatsby’s character yearns for the infinite; he sparkles with something unusual in the midst of the lavish wealth and chaotic parties of Long Island’s frivolities. Gatsby has “one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it . . . it faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor.”
Paul Kingsnorth delivered the keynote address at the 2023 FPR conference in Madison, Wisconsin. With help from a diverse band of fellow travelers including Jewish-Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen, Anglo-Catholic social critic Malcolm Muggeridge, and the prophetic French-Egyptian Sufi Rene...
Like Bob Dylan, Hamer’s life was marked by protest and songs of protest. Her protests, however, grew from her personal experience on the ground in Mississippi. Kate Clifford Larson’s Walk With Me demonstrates this rootedness in the local and Hamer’s commitment to place in meaningful ways.