News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
This week we watched an impressive murmuration fly over our home, land on the oaks and maples and beeches in our backyard, and then take to the air once again. The opening of one of my favorite Richard Wilbur poems came to mind:
As if a cast of grain leapt back to the hand,
A landscapeful of small black birds, intent
On the far south, convene at some command
At once in the middle of the air, at once are gone
With headlong and unanimous consent
From the pale trees and fields they settled on.What is an individual thing? They roll
Like a drunken fingerprint across the sky!
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In my weekly Water Dipper, I recommend essays about George MacDonald, friendship, and Michael Oakeshott.
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Matthew Milliner visits Frank Lloyd Wright's house in Taliesin and finds "the brittle surface of 'good design' shattered by rage." He drives on to another house he labels the "Jerusalem of Weird." Both are aesthetic and moral disappointments. But he concludes his tour of the Driftless region at a more quiet and truly beautiful destination.
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Richard Russell reflects on the spiritual dimension of hunting. As we come to the supper table to feast upon pheasant breast or the backstrap of a whitetail deer, we gain an inkling of that invitation to the true Table of Hospitality, where the Lord looks upon us lovingly despite our attack upon him.
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Jessica Prol Smith didn’t intend to welcome two children into an era marked by so much bleakness and turmoil. But with P.D. James’s help, she's remembered that there is no project more local, no gift more world-changing, than the calling of parenthood.
I've been reading Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos. Percy is an astute observer of human nature and American culture. He also has a dry sense of humor that is delightful. One particular gem comes in a section titled "The Nowhere Self: How the Self, which Usually Experiences Itself as Living Nowhere, is Surprised to find that it Loves Somewhere":
On the Johnny Carson Show, it always happens that when Carson or one of his guests mentions the name of an American city, there is applause from those audience members who live in this city. The applause is of a particular character, startled and immediate, as if the applauders cannot help themselves. Such a response is understandable if one hails from a hamlet like Abita Springs, Louisiana, and Carson mentioned Abita Springs. But the applause also occurs at the mention of New York or Chicago.
Question: Do Chicagoans in Burbank, California, applaud at the mention of the word Chicago
(a) Because they are proud of Chicago?
(b) Because they are boosters, Chamber of Commerce types, who appreciate a plug, much as a toothpaste manufacturer would appreciate Carson mentioning Colgate?
(c) Because a person, particularly a passive audience member who finds himself in Burbank, California, feels himself so dislocated, so detached from a particular coordinate in space and time, so ghostly, that the very mention of such a coordinate is enough to startle him into action?
(CHECK ONE)