Greetings from the Porch,

Somehow the Christmas break is over and classes begin on Monday. Ready or not, here it comes.

• In this week's Water Dipper I recommend essays about Dorothy Day, Tanya Berry, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

• Jessica Burke wrestles with the meaning of home for her expatriate family: "As we moved around, I might have said that home is a feeling. Or rather, you know you’re at home because of a feeling. I think I’d argue with myself now after finally having been settled in one place for over a decade."

• Casey Spinks responds to the new film Train Dreams: "It’s one of the best films of the decade. But it isn’t about the plot. It isn’t about the character development. It isn’t in the script, nor is it even in the cinematography. It is as if in a whisper which speaks to your heart. If you see this film and can’t hear it, I can’t help you. I can only say that this film helped me 'to live better and to love more.'"

• Jackson Greer traces the unlikely friendship that finally bloomed between T.S. Eliot and C.S. Lewis: "Lewis did love Eliot after their time together working on the psalter, and their friendship would hold until Lewis’s death in 1963, yet he refused to surrender his arguments against modern poetry."

• Austin Jepsky worries that the demise of the penny may be a harbinger of a cashless society: "Eventually, and by this I mean possibly within a decade, it would not be a huge leap then to see the elimination of the remaining denominations of paper money justified through the combined arguments of security and cost savings."

• Dalton Henderson describes the importance of beauty for fostering healthy civic life: "A city of gray concrete invokes the same belonging and responsibility as if there were a home decorated with nothing but concrete."

• Michial Farmer listens to songs about friendship.

The recent US foray in Venezuela made me revisit the essay that Wendell Berry penned in the wake of the 2002 national security strategy. "A Citizen’s Response to the National Security Strategy," later collected in Citizenship Papers, endeavors to articulate the practices, culture, and loves required for authentic citizenship:

A head of state, preparing to act alone in starting a preemptive war, will need to justify his intention by secret information, and will need to plan in secret and execute his plan without forewarning. The idea of a government acting alone in preemptive war is inherently undemocratic, for it does not require or even permit the president to obtain the consent of the governed. As a policy, this new strategy depends on the acquiescence of a public kept fearful and ignorant, subject to manipulation by the executive power, and on the compliance of an intimidated and office dependent legislature. To the extent that a government is secret, it cannot be democratic or its people free. By this new doctrine, the president alone may start a war against any nation at any time, and with no more forewarning than preceded the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Thanks for spending some time with us on the Porch,

Jeff Bilbro