News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
It's been bitterly cold here with several mornings below negative 10 degrees. But the squirrels dig through the snow after their buried nuts, the birds continue their domestic lives, and I passed two deer beds in the snow on my walk to work.
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In this week's Water Dipper I recommend pieces on social media, hyperbole, and walking.
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Doug Sikkema reports from Canada's Freedom Convoy, an ongoing protest against vaccination mandates. Sikkema sympathizes with the real frustrations of the protestors, but he also worries about the dangers of the revolutionary spirit: "The Revolutionary Spirit inhabits the Left and the Right, but it must be resisted if we hope to participate in the desperately-needed, constructive work of political, cultural, and economic repair."
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Austin Jepsky takes a 1940s novel as inspiration for one way of fostering sustainable, landed communities in an age of large-scale destruction.
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Max Longley reviews Ilya Somin's new book on "foot voting": "It would be nice if Somin would see migration (national and international) as a remedy for intolerable situations, a lesser evil, not a desirable thing in itself. Those who aren’t oppressed or impoverished but are tempted to leave their ancestral homes through ambition or restlessness, might stop and think."
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Harry Scherer commends the example of one family working to cultivate a healthy farming household: "Human stories, centered around human persons in pursuit of wisdom, are the roots from which communities grow. We can be sure, by the sweat on the brows of each person in the McGinley family, that this connection between the land and community is no mere metaphor."
I'll leave you with another Sabbath poem by Wendell Berry. This is number X from 2002. It is a poem that is also a prayer:
Teach me work that honors Thy work,
the true economies of goods and words,
to make my arts compatible
with the songs of the local birds.Teach me patience beyond work
and, beyond patience, the blest
Sabbath of Thy unresting love
which lights all things and gives rest.