News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
One of my colleagues has a few pawpaw trees in his backyard, and he and his wife generously shared some fruit with us. What a weird and wonderful plant.
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In this week’s Water Dipper, I recommend essays on barns, screens, and whisky.
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Victoria Farmer reviews the new novel by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling’s pen name) and considers how it portrays disability, online community, and interdependence: “by the end of the novel, Strike exists in a state of vulnerable interdependence that shows a profound growth and development. Not only is this a literary accomplishment, it’s an example that both his author and her critics – and, by extension, all of us who wish to live in compassionate community with one another – would do well to pay closer attention to.”
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Ben Christenson relates his experiences working in the restaurant industry and reflects on how different customers discipline–or fail to discipline–their appetites: “We sense that there’s more at stake in a restaurant visit than simply gustatorial or financial gain. Eating out, as Plato might have observed, is a chance to reinforce or undermine the rule of the rational over the appetitive soul.”
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Henk Brunink highlights Rien Poortvliet’s book tracing his ancestors back through the mists of history as they inhabited an out-of-the-way village: “They know their neighbors; they know their village; they know their land. They have their own vernacular that everyone who lives there understands because their father and mother taught them, just like they were taught by their fathers and mothers. The book is a survey of one man’s quest to bring the lives of his ancestors into the light. It is a description of what it is to belong somewhere.”
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Nadya Williams wanders the streets of Jerusalem and ponders the way that history accumulates: “To walk a place is to open the door to the possibility that you will grow to love it. With time, you could get to know it in an intimate way. Streets or roads or wild forest paths that we walk for the first time can be the object of wonder, even if sometimes also mingled with fear and mistrust.”
Bonnie Kristian’s new book Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community is out this week. It’s a thoughtful exploration of today’s media landscape, and Bonnie eschews the temptation of some grand solution. Stay tuned for a review at FPR, but in the meantime, here’s the blurb I wrote for it after reading an advanced copy:
Many of us have a sense that all we once took for granted is now up for grabs. We are living through a crisis of knowledge, and the result can be a feeling of suffocating uncertainty. Untrustworthy opens a window and lets in a breath of fresh air–and hope. Bonnie Kristian offers a way out of pointless debates and fearmongering conspiracy theories. This book is never condescending and always sympathetic; it is never partisan and always incisive.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro