News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
The fall issue of Local Culture is now at the printers and will hopefully be hitting the mail soon. Below is an update from Madeleine Austin about a recent gathering in North Carolina:
Fellow Porchers gathered on the Austin family’s Pittsboro, N.C. porch on 11 October 2024. This third gathering was the largest yet, with multiple families in attendance. In addition to the Austins, the Woodliefs (who are celebrating the release of a new book), the Youngs, the Hodges, Mr. ___ and Ms. Kirkhart, Mr. Jelic, Mr. Pansuriya, and the legendary Mr. Max Longley attended. We ate and were merry, caught up with old friends and met new. We enjoyed a delicious chili courtesy of Mrs. Woodlief, a delectable garden-grown pimento cheese from Mr. Shockley, and addictive peppers from the Young's garden. We missed a few of our regulars, including the LaTorres. Thus far, the most frequent reason to R.S.V.P. “no” is childbirth; we can forgive it so long as you bring the baby next time! The next Porch will be held, tentatively, sometime in late January.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about RFK Jr., hunting, and prison.
- Laurie Johnson wonders how we might recover a model of charity that fosters real membership: "Our need for privacy has been accentuated by the way we live, in which goods and services arrive seemingly out of the ether, things we’ve bought to consume, throw away, or do with what we wish. The faces and hands behind these goods are invisible to us."
- Ben Christenson reviews Jordan Peterson's new book: "Christianity spread because people actually believed Jesus was their Lord and Savior. They believed in miracles not metaphors."
- Elizabeth Stice wrestles with the need for national memory and national forgetting: "Proper forgetting depends on the idea of a nation itself. For Renan, 'a nation is a soul, a spiritual principle' built on two things, the past and the present."
- Grace Phan Bellafiore considers the implications that Lincoln's Gettysburg Address might have for us 161 years after he delivered it: "To prove the American proposition, we must dedicate our lives to its truth with our deeds every day, and maybe someday with our lives themselves."
- In this excerpt from his new book, Matt Miller ponders the tensions inherent in belonging and dependency: "Some folks plant their gardens seeking self-sufficiency—the ability to provide for themselves, to depend on no one. But self-sufficiency is precisely what we finite creatures can never attain, and a garden makes this truth shockingly plain. When I eat from my garden, my very life derives not from my self but from a network of other creatures upon whom I am entirely dependent."
Matt Miller's new book, Leaves of Healing: A Year in the Garden, is quite good. I had a chance to read it a couple of months ago, and here's what I wrote in response to it then:
Matt Miller invites readers to a marvelous hypaethral Sunday school, one that ponders the mysteries of creation and Creator while tasting the tang of an heirloom tomato. This is no curated, Instagrammable experience, however: calloused hands shaped each sentence, and dirt clings to these words. Yet if Matt is well acquainted with sweat and grief, he has also learned that hope may be found around any corner of the garden. Join him for this series of meditations that will feed you body and soul.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro