Greetings from the Porch,

We got out on our local lake for the first time this year and caught a mess of bluegill for dinner. They may not be the most glamorous fish, but they are fun to catch and quite tasty.

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about humanity, stupidity, and adversity.

• Alisa Ruddell reviews Leah Libresco Sargeant's The Dignity of Dependence: "The loving entanglement that defies our culture’s idol of autonomy is available to men just as much as it is to women, though differently."

• Russell Arben Fox remembers the life of Warren Farha and his work in creating Eighth Day Books: "I cannot imagine a better metaphor for, and a better invitation to, the forming and renewing of cultural connections and communities than bookish places."

• Tobias Roberts muses on Fermi's Paradox and imagines a localist take on extraterrestrial life: "What if our galactic neighbors have never come for a visit because they simply feel quite at home in their little corner of the universe?"

• Lisa St. Clair situates some of today's political ferment as downstream from Pat Buchanan's theological and political thought: "Buchanan’s fusion of Catholic subsidiarity and anti-globalism reveals the enduring fractures within the Religious Right that still shape today’s populist divides."

• Jim Wildeman recalls Sundays in his childhood home: "My father was the pastor, and he was not above reprimanding his children from the pulpit if we didn’t sit very quietly."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about kissing this week.

A book group I’m in read Theo of Golden recently, so I had a chance to read the book that, it seems, everyone is talking about. I was worried I’d find it sentimental or saccharine, but I really enjoyed it. Yes, it would benefit from an editor and has some loose narrative threads, but the basic plot arc works well. And I love the focus on the power of seeing the face of another person and recognizing that, in C.S. Lewis’s phrase, “there are no ordinary people.” Here’s another passage, though, in which Theo and an artist friend offer two competing definitions of good art:

“It’s hard enough to define what art is, much less ‘good art.’ I wonder if there is such a thing. Maybe there are just good responses. But I guess if a work of art makes us see something familiar in a new way or makes us feel something we ought to have felt all along or shows us our place in the world more clearly, maybe it qualifies as ‘good.’ If it makes us better somehow, maybe that’s what gives it value.”

Asher paused for a sip of coffee . . . “That means, of course, that ‘good art’ varies from one person to another, doesn’t it? And that good art can come from a child or a master. I don’t think the critics, especially the moderns, appreciate that idea very much. . . . Theo, I get the impression you’ve thought about this before. What do you think makes for good art?” . . .

“Yes, I have thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about it a great deal. And I’ve asked others about it. But I don’t know if I have an answer either. Other than this. It might not make a lot of sense, but for anything to be good, truly good, there must be love in it. I’m not even sure I know fully what that means, but the older I get, the more I believe it. There must be love for the gift itself, love for the subject being depicted or the story being told, and love for the audience. Whether the art is sculpture, farming, teaching, lawmaking, medicine, music, or raising a child, if love is not in it—at the very heart of it—it might be skillful, marketable, or popular but I doubt it is truly good. Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core.”

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro