News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The temperatures have finally dropped here in Pennsylvania this week, and the rains and storms have arrived. Now is a good season to drink tea, sit by a fire, and read a good book (or the latest issue of Local Culture).
In my weekly Water Dipper, I recommend essays on cattle ranchers, vegetable pickers, and remote workers.
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John Murdock suggests that the tangled supply chain should offer us a brief moment to consider its flaws without being blinded by the glare of its surface efficiencies.
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Elizabeth Stice contributes to our set of reflections on how COVID has altered education. The virus has given us many headaches, but it is also giving us an opportunity as we re-evaluate policies and practices and seek to care for one another and for our students.
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Jonathan Den Hartog reviews a new biography of Charles Lindberg. Christopher Gehrz traces the life of a fascinating individual, but in the process he raises important moral questions about which story of transcendence we seek to pursue.
This week it was the birthday of the Irish poet Patrick Kavanaugh. I had occasion to recall his brief and incisive essay "The Parish and the University," where he makes a crucial distinction between the parochial and the provincial. But this morning I'll leave you with one of his poems:
In Memory Of My Mother
I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily
Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday -
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle - '
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.
And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life -
And I see us meeting at the end of a town
On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.
O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is a harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally.