News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
Happy New Year–and merry eighth day of Christmas. We’ve had a lot of snow this week in the Pacific Northwest, so it’s been an unusually white Christmas here.
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I’ve resumed the Water Dipper after taking a much-needed break this past month. I need such rhythms of attention to maintain some semblance of balance and perspective. This week, I recommend essays on memory, maintenance, and Catholic social teaching.
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Aaron Weinacht reviews Batya Ungar-Sargon’s Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. He finds much to commend, but he also concludes that “if neoracist wokery is both good for business and for the Machiavellian care and maintenance of political power, then I suspect that it will take a bit more than humility and zen-like rejection of the outrage machine to dethrone our self-appointed philosopher-kings.”
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David Heddendorf considers three novels about three places. Each conveys not just a perfunctory setting but a web of topography, livelihoods, pastimes, and lore. And in each the experience of arriving at that place endures in memory and self-understanding.
Front Porch Republic contributor Mark Clavier released a new book this week: A Pilgrimage of Paradoxes: A Backpacker’s Encounters with God and Nature. It’s a fascinating and thoughtful meditation on walking and climbing, loss and faith, creation and the Creator. Here’s the blurb I wrote for it: “Mark Clavier knows what it is to be lost, to yearn for a transcendent God who remains out of reach. Yet as this wise book relates, he also knows what it is to be found, to encounter God in the common marvels of creation. Read this book and then go for a walk with eyes newly opened to the mysteries that are at hand.”