News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
We're enjoying the fall colors in southern Ohio, at Hocking Hills State Park, for a couple of days en route to Cedarville University where I'll be giving a talk and meeting with some students.
- In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Boethius, history, and charm.
- Shelby Kearns wonders if a revival of boarding houses might ameliorate loneliness: "This scenario of lonely widowhood—a common one amidst rising childlessness—makes me wary of solutions from pronatalists of all stripes, be they Silicon Valley transhumanists or my fellow religious conservatives. I hope that pronatalists succeed in encouraging ethical ways to grow families, but we need ways to keep older adults company when they cannot rely on their own children. We need the boarding house."
- Randy Aust reflects on the dangers of a grasping posture: "Perhaps that’s the lesson at the heart of both The Master and His Emissary and Moby-Dick: when we adopt a utilitarian posture of domination over the world, we misapprehend it."
- Micah Paul Veillon describes how he learned to respect creaturely life, even while remaining a hunter: "I had to understand life and nature not as something to be mastered, but as gifts afforded to me to steward by a God abundant in goodness."
- David Bannon encourages us to learn to fall down well: "Life knocks us down. It is the price of this world, however much we may kid ourselves otherwise. Our falls become part of us."
- Jason Peters says "I told you so" 15 years after warning that smartphones were a bad idea: "If there ever comes a true accounting of the costs we’re racking up for making, using, and discarding our mobile (de)vices, we will be obliged to admit that there has been no net gain. The withdrawals from the account exceed the deposits in both number and in sum."
- For the Brass Spittoon podcast, John Murdock interviews yours truly, and we talk about the recent FPR conference, Words for Conviviality, and more.
Laurie Johnson has a new book out, The Gap in God’s Country: A Longer View on Our Culture Wars. It's a delightfully heterodox look at American politics and is deeply informed by Wendell Berry, Dorothy Day, and other FPR luminaries. Here's the blurb I sent in after reading it:
Don’t read this book if you simply want your priors confirmed. Laurie Johnson draws on her deep study of neglected streams of wisdom to imagine genuine alternatives to our dysfunctional ways of living and working together. If you’re exhausted by the cant and talking points that dominate cultural and political discussions, you’ll find Johnson’s sanity bracing and hope-giving.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro