News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
I’m writing from the Rome airport, so I’ll make this brief. It has been, however, a full week of new essays at FPR.
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Adam Smith considers a new book on the pandemic and wrestles with the significance of the last few years: “What keeps me on one side rather than the other is my belief that if we had been living more fully in that real world, a lot of what we call “the pandemic” simply would not have occurred (perhaps including the virus itself, if we accept the increasingly compelling theory that it was man-made).”
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Christian McNamara weighs the significance of USC’s language policing: “Changing the phrase “field work” to “practicum” is, without more comprehensive action, a perfect illustration of cheap grace. It costs USC nothing more than some online eye-rolling to do.”
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David Eisenberg reviews a recent book on the history of “fascism” as a label in US politics: “The reader may be none the wiser regarding the definition of fascism, but this book affords a wisdom and moderation of sorts all the same, one that stems from the awareness that in popular rhetoric, fascism is a word full of sound and fury, signifying not much.”
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Joshua Hren draws wisdom from Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest: “Accompanying the poor or inhabiting their number, the honest among us recognize our own fundamental impoverishment. Bernanos, a father and husband who long depended on others for sustenance, inhabited the paradox of Christianity.”
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Ethan Mannon reflects on the various goods that come from heating his home with wood: “I enjoy certain utilitarian advantages by heating with wood, but I also prefer the habits of mind—attention, connection, succession, frugality—that my woodpile’s growth and contraction inspires.”
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In the latest episode of the Cultural Debris podcast, Alan Cornett talks with Raj Bhakta about “everything from Armagnac to the Apprentice (and the guy who hosted it), but mostly Armagnac. And a little bourbon.”
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro