News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
I'm surrounded by boxes, but we are in our new home. During this time of transition, we've been very blessed by friends and neighbors lending a hand: a large crew gathered to load our moving truck, another large crew (including several people I've never met) helped us unload, and since we've arrived many people have brought us food or offered assistance. One of our new neighbors even mowed our lawn for us. So we are feeling very grateful even if still somewhat unsettled.
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In the return of the Water Dipper, I recommend essays about poetry, fracking, and teaching.
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Casey Spinks commends the example of American philosopher Henry Bugbee, a guide to living the examined life.
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Gracy Olmstead talks with James Rebanks about his new book, Wendell Berry, and agricultural reform prospects in the US and the UK. This is a rich conversation--don't miss it.
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In another rich conversation, Matt Stewart discusses epistomology, philosophy, and love with his former professor Esther Lightcap Meek.
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Corbin K. Barthold asks some probing questions about political life today: "The left is collectivizing, the right falling apart. Can a pragmatic, humanist center hold?"
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Mark Clavier describes coming to terms with the fact that he is a white Southerner descended from enslaved Africans who subsequently became slave-owners. Reflecting on an ancestry containing triumph and shame, he discovers how closely the commendable and corrupt can be intertwined.
What's on the docket for next week? A review of On Common Ground and a report from a front stoop in New York City.
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s character Captain Beatty warns against the dangers of difficult, annoying stuff like philosophy and wisdom and discernment. Facts and information, on the other hand, aren’t dangerous in the slightest:
If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. . . . Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change.