Tag: coronavirus

As Sarah Orne Jewett knew, "everyday tasks” and the celebrations they engender are the condition upon which many other arts rest, including poetry.

Lana Del Rey. Wendell Berry. Stephen King. Singer-songwriter. Poet-novelist-essayist farmer. Horror writer. What brings these three seemingly disparate artists together in my imagination? Hope.

No man is an island, and everything we do, even in the privacy of our homes, has an effect on our society as a whole, but the past three months have shown us that the same lie that animates the Chinese government has spread and infected the West as well: the State knows best.

Chuck Marohn's work, whatever disagreements one may have with it, gives us some good counsel on where to start changing suburban-addicted minds and fiscal incentives.

The whole mode of online education screams that now I must be the source of attraction. But I’m not entertaining. In fact, I’m pretty unentertaining. If you ask most of my students, they may even say I’m boring.

I worry about our ever-expanding cult of safety and nod in agreement with so much of sociologist Frank Furedi’s description of the “Paradox of our Safety Addiction.” He argues that “the zero risk mentality breeds a culture of anxiety and a hunger for authority.”

We have been thrown back into our own small worlds, but these are worlds we are free to shape. Within the household we have considerable power over how our lives our lived, what we make, and how we consume.

Italy’s tragic status as one of the worst-hit nations is a reminder of its predecessor, the Roman Republic, which endured dozens of epidemics in a history that lasted from 509 to 42 BC. Rome’s survival amidst so much death and disease shows how epidemics, both biological and political, threaten republics.

While the futurists and transhumanists and purveyors of educational technologies would have us voluntarily cut off our arms so we can enjoy their fancy new prostheses, our priority should be to avoid dismembering ourselves.

Jay Y. Kim reflects on pastoral care during the pandemic in light of his recent book Analog Church: Why We Need Real People, Places, and Things in the Digital Age.