Greetings from the Porch,

One of our neighbors is hosting a gathering at their home this afternoon. There will be food, drink, swimming, and plenty of conversation. And it will be great to catch up with neighbors we wave to in passing more often than we talk with.

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about data centers, orchards, and Bartleby.

• Rebecca Skabelund reflects on why we shouldn't pacify children with screens in church and how we should instead engage them: "If you plop a screen in front of a child, it requires nothing of you other than handing over the device."

• Tessa Carman draws on Peco Gaskovski’s Exogenesis, Paul Kingsnorth's Buckmaster Trilogy, Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction, and Ivan Illich's Gender to consider how we might learn to speak faithfully: "To plant and cultivate good seed is perhaps the best response to this reality."

• D.P. Curtin tells a fascinating bit of history and considers how we might keep such memories alive: "The vast majority of the past has dissolved into a state of prehistory, forgotten because there was no one who thought it worthy of recording."

• Kirk Wareham visits Australia and examines efforts there to tend the land well: "Australia is a parched land where every drop of water is valued as gold."

• Ben Sisson expresses his gratitude for the ways serving in the army shaped his sense of self and community: "Though I’ve left the Army, it hasn’t left me."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about distance this week.

When I started reading Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry, I wasn’t sure if it was more like a Louis L'Amour novel or a Charles Dickens novel. It has the action and suspense of a western, but the characters end up driving the book, and what characters they are. After finishing this, I can see why McMurtry is a beloved narrator of the American West’s people and places. Here’s an exchange between two of the main characters, former Texas Rangers turned cattle ranchers, about the passing of the old West:

“Now look at that,” Augustus said. “The dern people are making towns everywhere. It’s our fault you know.”

“It ain’t our fault and it ain’t our business, either,” Call said. “People can do what they want.”

“Why, naturally, since we chased out the Indians and hung all the good bandits,” Augustus said. “Does it every occur to you that everything we done was probably a mistake? Just look at it from a nature standpoint. If you’ve got enough snakes around the place you won’t be overrun with rats or varmints. The way I see it, the Indians and the bandits have the same job to do. Leave ‘em be and you won’t constantly be having to ride around these dern settlements.”

“You don’t have to ride around them,” Call said. “What harm do they do?”

“If I’d have wanted civilization I’d have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,” Augustus said. “Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with.”

Call didn’t answer. It was one of Gus’s favorite themes, and if given a chance he would expound it for hours. Of course it was nonsense. Nobody in their right mind would want the Indians back, or the bandits either. Whether Gus had ever been in his right mind was an open question.

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro