Greetings from the Porch,

The fall issue of Local Culture is heading to the printer. If Jason's introduction sounds intriguing, you can subscribe now and get a copy for yourself.

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about fantasy, salmon, and Springfield.

• Jason Peters introduces the new issue of Local Culture: "We are sometimes lucky enough to encounter a book at just the right moment."

• Teddy Macker interviews David Orr in a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation: "We are out of alignment—perilously so—with Creation."

• Frank DeVito describes how he's come to feel at home in a particular patch of land: "As time passes, I realize [that] this idea of loving one’s home, one’s land, one’s place often threatens to exist more as an abstract idea than as a lived reality."

• Holly Stockley turns to Anne Shirley for wisdom about how we might care for places even if we move to new ones: "Like Anne, we can turn our efforts and affection to the place we are now. We, too, can love places other than Green Gables."

• Justin Rapp wrestles with how to feel at home in a place he doesn't particularly want to live: "We haven’t arrived at the promised land. No, we are far from it. But no matter where we are on the journey, I am called to care for my people today."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about poverty this week.

A friend recently gave me My Bohemian Baptism: And Then Some, a collection of short stories by Doug Brown, who attends the same church we do. I didn’t realize he was a story writer, but I greatly enjoyed this collection, and some of the stories are particularly well wrought. Here’s a description from one of my favorites, “De Rein,” where the narrator describes life in New York City:

It’s funny how people come to New York and feel like they own the town. They eventually come to terms with the fact that they only own or rent an infinitesimal bit of it—they don’t own bupkis. If they can get past that realization, they recognize that what they’ve really bought into is alternating current of the life and vitality and energy of the City. It’s kind of a social contract. And to work at all, it requires that people accept that they are moving in this never-stopping, often putrid, sometimes glorious, centuries-old hamster wheel. Even the area we’re in now, the upper east side—the neighborhood of quiet money—would not be what it is without all the other parts of this city moving in their own ways, flexing toward and extending away from them, even orbiting them; obscuring, revealing, or illuminating them—all running their mysterious, fixed, and unfathomable courses. In New York City, it’s like we’re all pigeons sharing everything but our little piece of ledge or window-sill.

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro