News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
While we were back in the Northwest for Christmas, Seattle got a nice snowfall. It was a treat to go cross-country skiing with my brother one morning; I don't get many opportunities these days to do that.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays on friendship, hospitality, and the food system.
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Tara Ann Thieke situates Michael Martin's trilogy in the lineage of Wendell Berry's Life is a Miracle. Both authors insist we need to inhabit the right story: " If the Metaverse beckons us, can we see past the facade to its utter rejection of the creative wisdom of God?"
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Andrew Spencer reviews Katherine Hayhoe's Saving Us: "In the balance, Hayhoe’s book makes a positive contribution to the climate conversation. The book encourages dialogue rather than hectoring. In that sense, though the targeted topic is climate change, Hayhoe’s advice is good for any sort of persuasive argument."
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Michael Sauter draws on Frank Mulder's Hyperreality: How Our Tools Came to Control Us to imagine more free and convivial forms of life: "Pictures of Frank Mulder make him look like he could be a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, on a bicycle, planting sycamores instead of apple trees, helping people, one by one, break free from the threefold madness of money, planning, and crowds."
I read Christopher Beha’s Index of Self-Destructive Acts over the Christmas break. It’s a big, ambitious, interesting novel with many brilliant set pieces and engaging characters. However, the ending left me dissatisfied, and I don’t think the action it sets in motion ever gets resolved. I’m still mulling it, though, and may have occasion to revise this initial assessment. To give a taste of its themes, here’s the character Frank Doyle critiquing the methodology of a Nate-Silver-like character named Sam Waxworth in a conversation with Sam’s wife:
For all its supposed empiricism, . . . your husband’s method isn’t very good at talking about what actually happens in the real world. It’s great for making predictions about a future state that doesn’t exist, but don’t ask it to look back at what we all know happened and explain it. That takes interpretation. You have to be able to pass judgment. None of this phony lab-coat objectivity. . . . The problem is that you can’t live probabilistically. Each of us is one of one. You have to take the leap eventually, and you have to be willing to be wrong. You can tell me there is a sixty percent chance of rain tomorrow, and, come rain or shine, you might have been right. That’s fine with the weather, because there’s more of it every day. But some questions we only get one shot to answer. You’ve got to make your commitment and live with the results.