News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
We’re beginning to fill out the schedule for our fall gathering in Madison, WI; stay tuned for more details in the coming weeks. Paul Kingsnorth’s essay (linked to in the Water Dipper below) may whet your appetite to come hear from him. The spring issue of Local Culture is also coming together, and it looks to be a particularly delightful, even convivial, edition dedicated to comestibles.
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In this week’s Water Dipper I recommend essays on wild Christianity, trains, and chatbots.
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Christine Norvell commends Booker T. Washington’s devotion to his students: “I think, I know, that Washington exemplified a whole-hearted devotion to his students. He was concerned, as I am, to educate the whole person of the student, not merely to train children to someday earn a good salary or support themselves.”
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April DeOlivier recounts her process of learning to value and be at home in the town where she grew up: “As I learn how to be a sticker, I hope to continually see the beauty of Battle Creek, no matter its faults. I want to persist in finding the good in my city, to be motivated by affection and love for it, and to be faithful to the place God’s called me to.”
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Alex Sosler argues that every educational philosophy or institution is leading students on a pilgrimage, and he challenges teachers and students to consider their destination carefully: “My goal is to re-image what education is—from a dry, stuffy, and dull task to a joyful, life-giving, wonderful journey.”
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Benjamin Myers contrasts mere convention with the deep wisdom of tradition: “To navigate life with sane prejudices—in the Burkean sense of prejudice as that judgment which we do not need to reinvent anew each time we utilize it—requires the ability to tell the difference between tradition and mere convention. A good education, one that includes the study both of great books and of logic, can go a long way toward developing this skill.”
I’ve been writing a chapter on Thoreau’s practice of walking and how this comes to stand in for a way of reading and writing. Of course his classic account of walking is found in his essay of that title, but he has delightful riffs on walking scattered throughout his books and journals. Take, for example, this from a journal entry on August 19, 1851:
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow—as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end & consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought—burst forth & fertilize my brain. you need to increase the draught below—as the owners of meadows on C[oncord] River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro