News from the Front Porch Republic
Greetings from the Porch,
This week Plough released the cover for a book I’m co-editing that’s been in the works for a couple years now. It’s been a very rewarding experience to participate in this project, and I’m looking forward to seeing this book out in the world.
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In this week’s Water Dipper I recommend essays about bison, ignorance, and selfies.
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Lenny Wells describes what it’s like on the ag extension circuit in Georgia: “Each of us at these meetings, the farmers, the homeowners, the retired school teachers, the businessmen, doctors, lawyers, county agents, and extension specialists, friends, and strangers, are connected by an interest in what grows from the earth and how we grow it. Each is trying to do so responsibly and profitably. We are trying to solve the puzzle presented years ago by Aldo Leopold when he wrote, ‘Our tools are better than we are, and grow better faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides, but they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history, to live on a piece of land without spoiling it.’“
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Russell Arben Fox critiques Trevor Latimer’s new book Small Isn’t Beautiful: The Case Against Localism for failing to have an adequate vision of human flourishing: “the definition of localism that Latimer reiterates throughout the book—‘prioritizing the local by making decisions, exercising authority, or implementing policy locally or more locally’ (p. 27)—is always employed in terms of the practical benefits which it may or may not provide to particular individuals. This makes it impossible for Latimer to accurately assess, or even to really fully acknowledge, what seems to me a key component of localism, however construed: the philosophical anthropology that builds upon the kind of love which human beings routinely have, and in localist thinking normatively ought to be able to have, for those people and those natural and social forms and patterns and practices most immediate to their lives.”
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Adam Smith disagrees with many of Latimer’s arguments as well, but he finds that Latimer’s critique raises essential questions that localists need to grapple with: “How much of our ‘localism,’ … is energized not by an alternative, anti-federalist theory of jurisdiction, but by an alternative vision of the good life, and more especially by our sense that the viability of this vision is increasingly threatened by a theory of jurisdiction which cloaks its own rival vision in liberal rhetoric about ‘not imposing our values on one another’?”
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Lee Trepanier reviews Bruce P. Frohnen’s and Ted. V. McAllister’s Character in the American Experience and concludes, “We always have been an unruly people, from the very beginning. It is a fact that gives us hope that our current disagreements and fights are not signs of our democracy’s weakness but its enduring strength.”
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Alan Cornett interviews Eric Twardzik about clothing, travel, and sheep.
Ed Yong’s I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life is a fascinating and accessible description of the ways in which microbes live in and among us, shaping our experience in drastic ways. Attending to these tiny forms of life expands the scope of the ecological health we must consider and care for. To take one example, Yong tells many stories about how the overuse of antibiotics causes unintended harms:
A rich, thriving microbiome acts as a barrier to invasive pathogens. When our old friends vanish, that barrier disappears. In their absence, more dangerous species can exploit the uneaten nutrients and ecological vacancies that remain. Salmonella, which causes food poisoning and typhoid fever, is one such opportunist. Clostridium difficile, which causes severe diarrhoea, is another. These weedy species bloom to fill the gaps left by a shrinking microbiome, dining heartily on the scraps that would normally be eaten by now-missing competitors. This is why C. difficile mostly affects people who have been taking antibiotics, and why most infections happen in hospitals, nursing homes, or other healthcare settings. Some call it a man-made disease, associated with the very institutions that are meant to keep us healthy. It is the unintended consequence of an indiscriminate approach to killing microbes, akin to blitzing a weed-infested garden with pesticides and hoping that flowers will grow in their stead; often, you just get more weeds.
Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,
Jeff Bilbro