July 17, 2021

News from the Front Porch Republic

Greetings from the Porch,

There are a lot of mosquitos in Michigan right now. Apparently last summer was relatively dry and many of the eggs never got enough water to hatch them, so now we have several batches hatching at once. It was also Thoreau’s birthday this week. Unfortunately, I don’t share his perception of mosquitos:

Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer’s requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world.

• Elizabeth Stice enjoys the new series Clarkson’s Farm. Clarkson is still not an expert on anything farming related at the end of season one, but he is learning all the time, including about the area where he lives and how to love it well.

• Henry George reviews Josh Hawley’s book on the dangers of Big Tech and finds some of his policy proposals to be promising.

What’s on the docket for next week? A review essay pondering the legacy of Spoon River and one taking stock of ecological factors in declining birth rates.

If you’re not familiar with Jennifer Reeser’s poetry, you’re missing out. Her most recent book of poems is Indigenous, which John Nichols reviewed for FPR when it came out. Here’s one of her poems that I’ve recently enjoyed:

Compass Rose

I’d buy you a Babushka doll, my heart,
and brush your ash-blonde hair until it gleams,
were Russia and our land not laid apart
by ocean so much deeper than it seems.

I have an oval pin, though – glossy lacquer
hand-made in Moscow, after glasnost came,
with fine, deft roses on a background blacker
perhaps, than history’s collective shame.

I’ve done my best to compass you with roses: the tablecloth, the walls, the pillowcase,
the western side-yard only dusk discloses
briefly, in Climbing Blaze and Queen Anne’s lace.

May they suffice for peace when you discover
your love is not enough to turn the earth.
I dream I saw a handful of them hover
against my pane the morning of your birth.