News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
I’ve been busy with last-minute details for next week’s conference, and things are shaping up for a great gathering. Today’s the last day to register; lots of you have already done so, but we still have room for a few more.
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In this week’s Water Dipper, I recommend essays on mourning, coffeehouses, and water.
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Mark Botts reminds us, drawing on various images from film and literature, that even though we may not face binary, dramatic choices each day, we are continually making choices with lasting consequences: ” I mistook one choice at one moment for choices that have to be made every day. Maturity comes through choosing the good under conflict.”
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Jason Russell examines Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle and considers how three characters model different postures toward the past: “In doing so, they each provide insight on how we can interpret the influence of history on present events.”
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Casie Dodd introduces Belle Point Press, one committed to its region and the art birthed there: “Raised in Eastern Oklahoma with roots older than living memory in the Natural State, we look forward to supporting new authors while connecting readers with the long thread of our region’s creative culture. Our mission is to celebrate the literary culture of the American Mid-South: all its paradoxes and contradictions, all the ways it gets us home.”
We went down to Pittsburgh this week to visit the Heinz History Center. It’s a great museum celebrating local history and people, and they have a fascinating exhibit right now about the artist John Kane. Kane immigrated to America as a teenager and worked many hard jobs connected to the steel industry and the region’s rapid industrialization at the turn of the century. Even after he lost a leg in a railway accident, he kept on working. He also found opportunity to paint, and near the end of his life, he gained recognition for his portrayals of urban and rural landscapes.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro