Tag: place

I fear that neither liberals nor most self-styled conservatives want to reexamine the habits, both economic and sexual, that have impoverished the working class, set the middle class on the wheels of a machine that literally sends their extra income up the chimney, and eviscerated neighborhood life.

As someone who squirms every time I see a couple or family all quietly tapping their cell phones, a room of twenty people talking is a beautiful sight. It is easy to despair at our polarized and atomized society, but I appreciate Gray’s book for giving a clear, achievable step for building community and making friends.

The value in seeing payphones is the way it develops a practice of seeing. So often we are driving or walking down streets, unaware of what serves us no purpose or where we aren’t heading. Looking for things forces you to notice things. Sometimes it will cause you to turn around and drive back to some spot you never would have seen if you weren’t watching so closely.

With some little local knowledge now in mind, I too may, day by day, attune myself to the Way, How ever imperfectly I go about What I am striving to do.

Places shape us and provide the contours of our communities. And despite the grittier dramas, the grip that a place has on us is not always all about past crimes and complicated emotions. Sometimes even a place we can’t seem to “escape” can be a source of pleasure or comfort in some ways.

eading Cheap Land Colorado makes you wonder how we can make more space for human flourishing among the poor and on the edges of society? Conover’s approach to the San Luis Valley might offer us a starting point.

The success of Wildsam is a reminder that many people want to experience the real. Every day we are marketed generic and homogenous products and destinations, but there is an audience for something different.

I am not now lamenting my station, which is a kind of existential loneliness, though at times I do. I’m putting it down in writing because I know for certain that in this loneliness I’m far from alone.

Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the vast expanses of these United States, or at least they think they do.

So leave if you must, but perhaps not today. Stop and consider all the ways you can stay.